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After an
assassination attempt against a Washington lawmaker that took the lives
of six other people, many Americans debated this week whether their
politics, culture and country have grown too violent.

“The anger, hatred,
bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” said
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who is investigating the crime.

The U.S. guarantees
the right to own a gun in its constitution and millions of its citizens
are proud of it. But no prominent political figure is as fond of gun
talk as Sarah Palin. The Republican activist has urged her followers,
“Don’t retreat, reload!” Before last November’s Congressional
elections, she also posted a map of the U.S. online, highlighting her
opponents’ home districts with gun-sight cross-hairs, as if taking aim.

One of the
districts she targeted belongs to Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic
Congresswoman who is now recovering from a bullet wound to the head
suffered in last week’s rampage.

Giffords objected
to Palin’s map at the time. “When people do that,” she said, “they’ve
got to realize that there are consequences.” The truth is that
journalists and media personalities, politicians and protestors of both
the right and left tend to favor violent metaphors. Palin is hardly
alone.

There is also no
indication that the 22-year-old suspect who was charged with carrying
out the rampage ever saw her map or drew his inspiration from any one
source in particular.

“Acts of monstrous
criminality stand on their own.” Palin said. “They begin and end with
the criminals who commit them.” Is she right? Is it simplistic and
inappropriate to blame the crimes of a single deranged gunman on the
attitudes of an entire country that is law-abiding and peaceful for the
most part? Or are America’s angry politics and plentiful guns a
combination that was bound to turn deadly?

President Barack Obama cautioned against any quick conclusion but suggested Americans do have to be more civil.

“We can be better,”
he said. “We may not be able to stop all evil in the world but I know
that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.” Many American
politicians have tried to keep politics out of the collective grief and
mourning that have followed the attack, but they haven’t quite
succeeded.

Jonathan Mann
presents Political Mann on CNN International each Friday at 18:30
(CAT), Saturday at 3pm and 9pm (CAT), and Sunday at 10am (CAT).