Reality Distortion Field San Diego-Style
If a prisoner is detained in a window-less holding cell and no one is around to see him, is he really a prisoner?
You can ask some at Gitmo, of course, or the blind activist in China, but no need. It happened to Daniel Chong, a college engineering student in San Diego.
Unless his goal was to Occupy Jails, he might be really angry, if he wasn’t focused on trying to get his mind back.
His thirst mad him see a mirage. “I ripped the walls and waited for the room to flood for some reason,” the 23-year-old student told the Christian Science Monitor.
“I felt like I was completely losing my mind.”
If he had been able to do a self-portrait it might have rivaled Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which sold for $120 million this week.
It turns out he had been arrested in Drug Enforcement Agency raid. No one bothered to charge him with anything or even record his arrest.
That might help explain why he was left alone for four days, drinking his own urine and hallucinating. If he had died it might have been possible to identify him from his DNA. Who says technology is a waste.
With warrant-less arrests common these days why bother with waterboarding, paperwork or videos. See what it did to the Germans? Habeas corpus. Forget it.
The only Latin expression relevant today is “memento mori,” which means remember you are going to die.
If he had not been found by chance he likely would have died within 12 to 24 hours, said his lawyer.
While much of the world media focused on a Chinese activist hiding in the U.S. Embassy no one knew about Chong right here at home.
Wait until the governments clamp down on the Internet. The only potentially “seditious” talk will be in theaters.
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