THE OHIO HORROR AND AMERICA'S CHILDREN

          A story that broke in the US Media this week concerned one of the worst cases of domestic abuse: not that such incidents are uncommon in Exceptional America these days, but the case was remarkable for its magnitude. Local police were serving a warrant on a dirtbag in the rural village of Hamden, Ohio. They couldn't enter the home because of an overpowering smell and, according to local reports, the floor appeared unsafe. 

         They called for reinforcements, and what they found in a 12x12 room were 16 people---some children and some teenagers. Their condition was appalling. They were confined to this room for nearly four years; police found them in piles of human waste and trash, covered with insects, emaciated and disoriented; a 'feral condition' as one described it. 

         The first image that came to my mind on hearing these depictions were some of the footage I'd seen of Concentration Camp inmates liberated in Europe during the Second World War. Conditions weren't that much different from the victims of that horrible system. The authorities reported that some of the victims were near death: if the police have any sense, of course, they would see if there were others who weren't so lucky, but nobody's holding their breath relying on their competence. The suspects responsible for this horror looked about like the types one would expect to find:

              Predictably, the neighbors in this town of 727 souls when interviewed by the local press, had absolutely no idea that anything was even out of the ordinary. Some swore that they didn't even know that there were children living there. The police stated that the smell was so intense that it was noticeable from the street, apparently this didn't arouse any concern among the residents of Hamden. The house was owned by a Trustee for an estate, apparently nobody in four years ever bothered inspecting the home. The bad smell clung to the suspects when they went about town and they were described as wearing rags, but nobody thought of doing a welfare check. 

          Such is the typical story: nobody knew. But one reporter questioned the cashiers at the local Dollar General and got a slightly different story. 

          "Employees at the Hamden Dollar General say that the Siders were regular customers...often accompanied by just one of their children.

          "I noticed that he would keep her really close to her," said one cashier. "She was not allowed to speak to nobody, I noticed that. And when the kids came in, they were all very thin, ghost-white, didn't have any weight on their bodies, and they had their hair over their faces...

         "The employees tried to help, offering the family clothes and hygiene products, but they said that they never saw those items put to use...that odor described in the house was noticeable every time the family came into the store..."

       So nobody knew, huh? Like so many other of our societal problems, this appears to have been a case of nobody wanting to know. 

       At the ensuing spectacle staged for the Media, sanctimonious Vinton County officials brought out the usual trope about how concerned they were for the children's welfare. One official even had the gall to compare conditions in the home to "a third world country" and lamented that "things like this don't happen in America." Let's set the record straight on this point: we don't hear stories like these in foreign countries, but abuse and neglect of children and minors happen here on nearly a daily basis. Why is this so? It's because other cultures have a sense of community and a sense of responsibility for their neighborhoods. Our postmodern culture is very much an every man for himself society, and what doesn't affect directly one person isn't considered relevant to anybody.

      The fact that many---if not most---Americans consider Abortion until the day of birth as a basic Human Right; the fact that our public schools are hellscapes and our so-called 'child welfare system' is rife with corruption and a complete disregard for justice; the fact that homosexual grooming of children and minors is not only permitted but encouraged; the fact that the US is at or near the bottom of Developed Nations in both infant mortality and mothers dying in childbirth; the fact that suicide is the second leading cause of death among those aged 10-18 years---these facts tell us all that we need to know about how much Americans really care about 'the children.'

      We, as a culture, need to stop pretending that we're shocked by things like the Hamden Case and start coming to grips with the fact that our own rotten culture is toxic for children, and young people generally. Until we start facing that fact, such stories will become more common.