Hikers await release (again) in Iran

I woke to news that there’s been a snag in the release of the two hikers imprisoned in Iran. This situation is totally political. Iran is callously playing with these prisoners’ lives and their families’ fears to make money and to make international political points.

That’s horrible, and I truly feel for the prisoners and their families.

Yet, as I listened early this morning to reports of the latest snag to the hikers’ release, I could not help but think about the thousands of people Americans have imprisoned illegally and/or immorally over the years. Whether it was teenagers caught in the wrong place and the wrong time and held and tortured in GITMO indefinitely or Latinos coming to this country only trying to survive, Americans are callous toward other people to an extreme degree. Americans tend to “feel” only for those “of their own kind”  and to dismiss the agonies to which we subject families all over the world by imprisoning thousands of innocent people from other countries.

I feel for all imprisoned people and for their families - whether they are Americans in other lands or people we imprison in this country. I also feel for our own Americans we imprison unjustifiably in this country primarily because they are poor and have no other way to survive than crime.

Ours is the greater guilt because of sheer numbers.

I grieve for those hikers and their families, but equally for all those thousands Americans imprison, often torture, and hold indefinitely. Americans have no justification for pretending to be superior in any way.

Remember:

• It was Americans who recently cheered about 234 executions in Texas.
• It was Americans who recently whooped and hollered at the idea of an uninsured American dying for lack of health care.

We are not superior or “exceptional” - anything but.