Oh the inhumanity...

I wish somebody in my blog constituency could explain to me how a man can get run over, in broad daylight, in the middle of a hustle and bustle part of town, with at least a dozen witnesses immediately present, and do seemingly nothing more than look, gawk, and go on with their lives. From Foxnews:

A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but appear to do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.

The chilling scene — captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera — has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city's biggest newspaper blaring "SO INHUMANE" on the front page and the police chief lamenting: "We no longer have a moral compass."

"We have no regard for each other," said Chief Daryl Roberts, who on Wednesday released the video in hopes of making an arrest in the accident that left Angel Arce Torres in critical condition.

Setting aside the vitriol I have for the two miscreants whose game of Grand Theft Auto style racing through the streets was interrupted by a living and breathing human being - because they will be caught and charged, hopefully thumped with a club a time or ten - I have to ask myself: what on earth paralyzed so many of those onlookers and passers-by?

Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is legality. The Good Samaritan Law takes care of that - though I doubt most if any of them knew that. I think it goes deeper in to our subculture, and it's something I've harped on before. We've been ingrained indoctrinated to sit back and let someone else - namely the government - take care of whatever happens. If I were one of those people in that video who had seen that and did nothing, I'd be ashamed of myself.