I don’t know and I don’t care very much whether Jared Loughner tried to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords for political reasons. Trying to divine the motivations of madmen is a fool’s game.
I do, however, care about political discourse and the rhetoric of our daily lives.
Back in 2000 I bid on my first E-Bay auction for a video camera. A few hours after I won the auction I received an outraged email from another bidder telling me that I had screwed everything up by bidding too high for the camera.