"So when you're in Iran and in solitary confinement," asks Lt. Chris Acosta, my guide at California's Pelican Bay State Prison, "was it different?" His tone makes clear that he believes an Iranian prison to be a bad place.
...
"There was a window," I say. "Just having that light come in, seeing the light move across the cell, seeing what time of day it was...." Without those windows, I wouldn't have had the sound of ravens, the rare breezes, or the drops of rain that I let wash over my face some nights. When, after five weeks, my knees buckled and I fell to the ground utterly broken, sobbing and rocking to the beat of my heart, it was the patch of sunlight that brought me back.
Here, there are no windows.
IMO the reason why Americans are capable of having the penal system we do is because so many of us never have to think about it. This is Mother Jones. This will not be CNN or FoxNews or MSNBC. 60 Minutes might do an exposé, but it will be 'balanced' by vested interests, and viewers might only walk away feeling uneasy, not repulsed.
This doesn't just hold for our insane prison system, either. The madness is creeping as media networks steadily retreat from serving their audience with journalism.