There is no reason to believe that HLLs have to be particularly inefficient (for example the scheme compiler stalin can hold its own and often run faster than an equivalent number crunching code written in c). I am not arguing that Python should be that high level language, but that the current state of "divide" (c for programming servers python for apps) is a little artificial and is a result of a lack of options. Not grappling with parallelism only makes the scene a little more entrenched.
I find X10, Fortress and Chapel quite exciting as they are trying to straddle this gap.