Few events reverberate with such force that they rattle our very understanding of ourselves as Americans. Many such events mark the beginning of war. Others simply initiate national introspection.

When the Twin Towers fell, every American was confronted with the fact that our way of life was deemed so reprehensible by others that they would sacrifice thousands of lives, including their own, to repudiate it.

For most, it was clear the perpetrators of this national horror were the enemy. Though we wouldn’t immediately understand their identity or their motives, there was little doubt that America’s selfhood was under attack. We banded together as friends against a common enemy and defended with vengeance our right to exist as we understood best.

When Jared Lee Loughner allegedly showered bullets on an innocent political gathering outside an Arizona supermarket, killing six and seriously wounding more than a dozen, there was no external enemy on which to lay blame. The attack did not come from a malignant force halfway around the world this time. There was no collective other to vilify.

The lack of a foreign enemy didn’t slow the placing of blame, however. Almost immediately, the country divided itself along partisan lines, one side blaming the other for its inflamed rhetoric only to have the finger pointed back at itself for being guilty of the same offense.

Sarah Palin was an obvious initial target for lefties. After all, it must have been her map with crosshairs over the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the apparent target of the attack, that caused the tragedy. But then again, the Democrats had a remarkably similar map in 2004.

Thankfully, the blame game is winding down. Both sides now seem to be accepting they are guilty of using distasteful and potentially harmful rhetoric. A national appeal to “tone it down” is emerging as a potentially positive reaction to the tragedy.

But let’s be honest; are mere words really the culprit here? In some ways words do help us construct our reality, but even more they are merely a means of communicating what already exists without them.

What already exists is a political climate as vehemently divided as it has ever been. The economic, moral, religious, sociological, even geographical divisions between the two parties continually vying for power in America have become so polarizing that we have become each others’ enemies.

If drawing a causal link between politics and the horrific actions of one individual who seems to have had a clean break with reality is possible at all, it must be recognized that our degenerative words are only a symptom of a fundamentally divided country.

To blame words in themselves for the toxic political environment that exists in America is a fatal mistake. They certainly enforce it, but to say the words we use to talk about politics actually create those same politics is no less paradoxical than M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands.

If Jared Loughner was in fact motivated by some perverted political vision, it seems far more likely that it was not the words we use that influenced him as much as it was a politics that has turned our friends into our enemies.

Political philosopher Carl Schmitt defines the concept of the political as being fundamentally grounded in a friend-enemy distinction. “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy,” he wrote.

Though he suggests that this distinction is almost always made between states, he recognized that it could also exist within a country if internal divisions were strong enough to make armed conflict between them a real possibility.

I am by no means suggesting America is on the brink of civil war. As Schmitt explains, violent conflict never has to actually occur; all that matters for the political is that the possibility exists.

But the Arizona shooting, coupled with reports that domestic radical militant groups seem to be growing exponentially and figures that show violent threats against senators have nearly doubled in the last year, seems to suggest the possibility is certainly there.

It seems that our politics are no longer defined in a way that distinguishes fellow Americans as friends and others that might seek to do us harm as enemies.

America, it seems, has become constituted by two separate states and the friend-enemy distinction that creates the very concept of the political has somehow become internalized.

If the violent rhetoric that has become so prevalent between parties is in fact an effect of the political division in America and not its cause, we seem to have a much larger task ahead of us than simply watching our mouths.

This may all seem overly doom and gloom, but I steadfastly believe in the profound productive energies of our country and our ability to overcome any forces whether external or internal that may threaten our prosperity and goodness.

It seems almost glib to look to President Obama for hope at this point, but for all his shortcomings his words at the Arizona memorial were nothing short of inspiring.

“I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

Kyle Mianulli ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism, philosophy and political science.