Read Rabbi Andy Bachman’s thoughtful ruminations on issues related to and including the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday. Here’s an excerpt:

When news came in today (as I was finishing Shabbat lunch with my daughters) that US Representative Gabrielle Giffords had been shot at constituent event, practicing democracy; when it was revealed that Federal Judge John Roll was murdered; and that several others were either dead or in critical condition, it becoming abundantly clear for our generation that we were now officially living in our own harrowing time of dissension, division, danger and violence.  The Civil War; Vietnam; and now our time, threatening to divide the country, destabilize its government, place in the cross-hairs of a semi-automatic weapon (wait to will uncover the trail leading the sale and trade of that weapon) a sitting member of Congress whose office has already been vandalized for her pro-health care reform vote, who was the object of violent threats digitally preserved in some lunatic’s Twitter account, and the Judge who fell beside her, singled out with death threats himself for his support of immigrants rights–we knew it would come to this.  As much as it pains us to admit it, we knew it would happen.

We Americans live remarkably unrestrained lives.  We live in the immediacy of our own narrative bubbles.  The unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the God of Individuality we worship to such an alarmingly perverse degree that we have lost the ability to collectively recognize the danger and the evil of the unleashed anger among us.