I was just finishing the last bite of a yummy cheese enchilada when the last of the Chilean miners reached the surface.  The fact that the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant’s TV was tuned to a Spanish language station didn’t make the drama any less emotionally compelling.  (I would, however, have to pick up the soap-opera-y nuance later on in English to understand the details of the mistress/wife sub-plot or the bottom-feeders snarking around the site waiting to sign book and movie deals).  I’m happy that the ordeal ended well, but my greater humanitarian self is only reminded that the kind of swift, combined effort that averted a potential tragedy could be aimed at many more universally tragic disasters…but, just isn’t.

Many appetite-ending debates where I have laid my supposition of ‘money as myth’ as the basis for my thesis have ended in loud, polarized, “you just don’t get it!”, exasperations, solving nothing and assuring that dessert along with any resolution would be left off the table.  But, the round-the-clock coverage of the miners’ rescue emphasizes my premise.  We are an intelligent and resourceful species capable of complex thought and compassion with the ability to cooperatively solve seemingly insurmountable problems, (electricity and water supply, ending small pox and polio, man on the Moon and rovers on Mars…fried ice cream).  We do, however, unconscionably weigh make-believe monetary costs against seeking solutions to our most dire problems while patting ourselves on our collectively cool backs for a non-game-changing effort to save thirty-three souls.  Does feeding, clothing and sheltering the world really need a cost analysis?  We could end many more life threatening diseases if so much of the designated resource for research wasn’t skewed toward more profitable ends like pills for ED and overeating.  We could put everybody to work rebuilding, revitalizing and reinventing the systems of creating and delivering energy, providing efficient transportation and revamping public education.  These are the things that will make us a morally and economically stable society, nationally and globally.  Opponents who shout about deficit increases with vein-popping evangelical fervor are merely puppet voices booming from the otherwise faceless super wealthy whose power and influence will be diminished by a fully employed work force.  Anyone who can’t see that…NO DESSERT!

We need to stop all the meaningless debates about the minutiae that have spawned anger from the hopelessness of insecurity and the legitimate feeling of being left out of the process.  The vague doctrine of the Tea Party, the foundation-less platform of the Republicans and the weak, uncommitted, amorphous representation of the Democrats are helpful to no one.  We need to think of ourselves as trapped miners and set the smartest, strongest, most engaged, (non-political), rescuers to work…NOW!