America might be a sociopath.

It doesn't end.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), has now been shot in the head at a public event where at least seventeen other people were shot, at least five of them fatally. Giffords was one of those targeted on Sarah Palin's infamous crosshairs map, and in fact made some clear public statements about the danger of that kind of rhetoric in its aftermath, having received death threats and had her offices vandalized. The news celebrities and neon-violent politicians like Palin will come out and decry any suggestion of responsibility, but it comes down to a simple point: if you actually want people to stop acting out in terms of guns and blood, you have to stop talking to them in terms of guns and blood. If you actually want people to engage the polis thoughtfully and productively, you have to speak to them thoughtfully and productively. Persisting in doing otherwise, with so much evidence of the wages your words bring in, makes you an active, blithe part of the problem.

The bizarre picture these figures paint of how media works actually relies on the same principle as their resistance to socialism: I am not responsible for my fellow citizens.