Historical Crossroads.

When I got home from work tonight, I was looking forward to tuning into Fox Soccer Channel and losing myself in coverage of the third round of the FA Cup, in which my club, Chelsea plays tomorrow.

However, like all Americans tonight, my attention was drawn elsewhere. It was drawn to Tuscon, Arizona, a place where I've visited many times and a place where one of my best friends lived and went to school. Today it was a place of violence, a place the United States of America will finally look at itself in the mirror and will hopefully recognize a historical crossroad.

Outside a supermarket today a crazy terrorist. Yes, terrorist, walked up to a political gathering being hosted by Arizona Congresswoman Gaby Giffords, pulled out a 9mm Glock, and started shooting. He shot the Congresswoman in the head, he also killed six people, including a Federal Judge and a 9 year old girl. Luckily, people got to this guy before he got to take the coward's way out, so he'll live to stand trial for his crimes.

Assassination. It's a word that people my age and younger are really only familiar with from school. We think of Lincoln, of JFK, of RFK, of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It's a word we're all now more familiar with, as it happened outside a grocery store today.

What does that mean for America? How do we view ourselves and our political discourse? Surely there will be many folks (saw it quite a bit on Fox News tonight) that will be out to paint the shooter as a screw that came unhinged, as a madman with no political motive whatsoever. Do you really buy that? I'm not questioning whether the guy is crazy or not, I'm sure he is. Still, crazy people have motives too, and the plain fact of the matter is that this man sought out this gathering and the police in Arizona have confirmed that Giffords was the target. Now that we know that crazy people do this sort of thing, does that make us look irresponsible?

It sure does. Was it irresponsible for Sarah Palin to have a map on her website depicting Giffords district with a crosshair over it, urging people to "aim and reload" for democrats? Yes. You'll notice tonight that that particular graphic no longer appears on her site. Was it irresponsible for Giffords opponent in the last election to urge his followers to join him in firing a machine gun at her? Absolutely!

People who engage in this kind of politics need to be held responsible for this.

Can we please stop seeing each other as a devil and start seeing each other as all on the same team again?

Please watch this powerful special comment from Keith Olbermann.