To desensitize is "to take away the sensitivity of; make less sensitive."  Have you heard that word lately?  Probably you've heard it about ten times since the tragic incident in Jonesboro.
    Let me give an example of what it means to be desensitized.  I can thank Arthur Conan Doyle for the illustration, but I can't reference the story.  Sherlock Holmes, the notable consulting detective, was called out to determine how a man, who had a taster check each meal before he ate them, was found dead, poisoned by his food.  Through the course of the investigation several answers are posed, but none can fully justify the evidence or lack thereof.  Ultimately the case is solved when Holmes suggests, and rightly so, that the murder victim had eaten the same food as his taster.  Why did the taster not die as well then?  The taster did not die because over a long period of time the poisoner had been giving the poison to the taster in small unlethal doses.  These doses were increased every day until there was enough tolerance that the taster could survive the poisoning while the victim could not.  In other words the taster was desensitized to the poison.
    Application:  What happens when a very young child sees on television even something so innocent as cartoon violence and as he grows sees more and more violence, increasingly intense, but never so much as to completely turn off the child.  As the child grows he watches shows which show fighting, death, and ultimately which glorify violent cold blooded murder.  What happens is that the young person is desensitized to it.  He does not see it as ugly and vicious, because he has seen it every day and in every way.  Then when it comes time for him to face a problem where does he turn?  He turns to where he has gotten his training.  Perhaps he has never heard about justice, perhaps he never saw shows that bring out the grief of the victims families, or the humiliation of prison sentences, perhaps he has never seen a Bible.  No, he lashes out in violence because that is what America has taught him.  He is a carefully trained killer, or rapist, or thief, or liar, or gambler because we as a country have told him that he can be, and we have showed him how, and it looks cool.  Yes, America is desensitized.
    "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death."  (Proverbs 14:27).