The touch-and-go peril facing 33 miners trapped 2,000 feet down in a Chilean mine and their impending rescue might well be a metaphor for how human crises can be solved when people work together quickly for the common good.
It's been more than 60 days since 32 Chileans and one Bolivian were literally entombed by the cave-in.
But working around the clock, and clinging to hope that an outcome would mean eventual rescue of all 33, crews ultimately drilled a hole to the trapped miners, quickly providing air, water and food.
The cliffhanging dilemma of the sole Bolivian miner has thawed even the frosty relations between Chile and neighboring Bolivia, which for 100 years have been locked in an angry border dispute.
Enter the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which immediately provided on-site medical and psychological experts trained to deal with human isolation, plus a former submarine commander who hurriedly designed and built a 12-foot, 21-inch-wide rescue capsule resembling an oversized cigar container that will be dropped to the miners to lift them to safety, one each hour beginning yesterday. Rescue is not ensured. But try the rescuers must.
Wherein lies a lesson for other humans whose daily lives are relatively safe and trouble-free, but who regard some crises indifferently as matters to be put off or ignored.
Solving a crisis may not be guaranteed, as the risk-averse want before proceeding, but trying is a must.
How different the entire atmosphere of the United States would be today had disparate political factions faced national crises with a sense of unity, instead of squaring off like the feuding Hatfield and McCoy mountain folks.
Health care reform fashioned with compromise and cooperation would've sailed through Congress. Ditto for Wall Street regulation. The same for clearing the desk of dozens of judge nominations now on hold. Also on appropriations for a crash program to rebuild and repair the nation's crumbling infrastructure and devising major energy reform.
Instead, America is paralyzed by partisan political petulance. Millions of jobless workers need to be rescued from their devastating plight (think Chilean miners), while those who could end their suffering block rescue.
Imagine the world condemnation had rescuers in Chile argued over what width rescue shaft to drill, where and whether food or water should be sent down first, while the miners slowly perished.
Americans are paying a painful price for their petty, vindictive politics. National excellence and national unity are being squandered for the sake of vanity and political one-upmanship.
