"No One Gives a Shit"

The conclusion drawn by Sam Rocha in the wake of media apathy over the Kermit Gosnell story, which arguably is but a reflection of society's apathy over the brutal killing of newborn children:

I avoided the Gosnell story, too, initially. The headlines seemed too fantastic to be the wholly true and the details I gleaned made my stomach turn. I tend to monitor stories like these from a distance to see if they stick. This one stuck, thanks to Twitter and Facebook. I’ve only been able to read two articles — from the Atlantic and Slate — on this gruesome crime, and I read them hastily, with a sense of disgust and despair. I also found this article from 2011 about Gosnell in the New York Times, which I scanned.

There has been some media coverage out there all along, it turns out, but it is the question of degree and quality — and volume — that is highly suspect. Salon seems to think that we just don’t read enough alternative media, which is true, but that doesn’t address the primary concern.

This event is different, but strangely related to Savita for me. What got me so worked up about Savita now has me depressed and despondent, senseless and void. Numb.

Let me be clear: cultural despair is not the same thing, I think (I hope?), as theological despair. Hope against hope.

Welcome to the dark ages. An age where darkness is not the result of widespread ignorance or circumstance or feudal folklore. No. This is a time of intentional darkness. The Enlightenment is over. The grand experiment of it all, the United States of America, has failed, miserably. We have nothing left but a futuristic fantasy that propels us into techno-economic nihilism.

We’ll forget Gosnell soon enough. Just as we forgot about the last person who told us that we’re headed for cultural suicide.

No one gives a shit.

I'd like to believe Sam is wrong.  I'd like to but I'm hard pressed to have that kind of faith.  Yesterday on Facebook, someone who I respect but who I disagree with more times than not, wrote this on his wall:

It is possible to find what Dr. Gosnell is accused of doing horrific and still support abortion rights. They are two completely different issues. I know this, because that's how I feel.

It's that disconnect that makes me think Sam Rocha is more right than I want him to be.  

How can one find what Dr. Gosnell did outside of the womb different from what other abortionists do inside the womb?  How?  Is the birth canal the container for magic juju that allows for something to be right before passing through it and wrong afterwards?  Seriously?  In what world?

Sam wrote that we live in a time of intentional darkness.  

It's hard, terribly hard, not to agree.

God help us.