THE HUMANITY: Two Monsters And Some Victims

I am about to say some things many will not like in the least.  I have been pondering the stories of Jared Loughner and Kermitt Gosnell.  But much more, I have been pondering their victims, and the "voice" they have been given in the media and in our society.

We all know who Jared Loughner is.  And we all know the name of at least one of his victims.  She is Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.  A Federal District Court judge was also killed; can you recall his name?  He was murdered, according to accounts, while shielding another of the victims; a hero, performing an act of humanity.  There was a sweet nine-year-old girl who Loughner murdered, as well.  You can, perhaps, remember her name, and you might have an image of her face in your mind.

But can you name any others of the dead?  Do you know their stories in the slightest degree?  Can you name any of the wounded besides Giffords, and perhaps Eric Fuller (the poster-boy for Collectivist moonbat-level hate)?  Do you have the least idea how they are doing as they recover?

As respects Rep. Giffords, each day brings new stories of her miraculous recovery.  Who else among the wounded have you heard about?

The nation was so emotionally fractured by acts of a monster in Tucson, the President Of The United States found it useful to hold a memorial (after a fashion) to help us "heal".

Only some of us know who Kermitt Gosnell is.  Many of us do not have a clue.  But virtually NONE of us has any idea of what his (almost certainly) hundreds of victims looked like.  We have no concept of their stories.  We don't have a sweet picture of their smiling nine-year-old selves, and descriptions of what good or interesting people they were becoming.  We never will.  We cannot recall a single name, because most had no names...outside of "Baby X".  A few were adult women.  But they were mere units of society, nobody you or I would know.

There will be no memorial for Gosnell's much higher body count of victims, televised over the networks in prime-time and presided over by the Mourner-In-Chief.  There is no need to "heal" a shattered nation, because pretty much nobody is shattered by what Kermitt Gosnell did.  And certainly not the President.

Loughner committed his monstrosity in a matter of seconds.  Gosnell took years.  Loughner is mad.  Gosnell is sane, as were the people he hired to help him with his monstrosity.  As were the OFFICIALS who enabled it.

We have...from tragic time-to-time...mass killings in the U.S.  Most of us never know a single victim's name, or their story.  Why was Tucson different?  I will leave the full answer to that question for you to ponder, but I think we all know the overarching answer; this murderous spree involved someone of power and some fame.  A Congresswoman.

Now, I totally get all the rationales that could be named to explain why the life of a Congresswoman suddenly elevates this from your too commonplace mass killing.  I get those, and they make me very uneasy.  I get them, and I deplore them.

There is a basic wrongness at work here, where we go into a national paroxysm over the shooting of a famous person, but actively, INSTITUTIONALLY conspire in the cold butchery of dozens of helpless, anonymous others.

Part--but only part--of that wrongness in how we weigh the value of human life lies in the FACT that POLITICS plays such an immense role in these disparate stories.  But another part is in our culture, and if that changes, our politics will change, too.  And, to change a culture, you change hearts.