Time to get serious

Enough.

It is time to get serious. Time to put away our pettiness. Time to drop our differences.

It's time to come together.

Overnight, a gunman opened fire in a theater in Aurora, Colo., filled with fans waiting for the premiere of the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises." As I type this, 12 people have been killed, others wounded.

Enough.

I am not going to blame this on video games, gratuitous violence in motion pictures, or the gun itself. I believe that a person is responsible for his or her own actions. Assassins are as old as antiquity.

However, I do think it is time -- long past time -- to have a conversation. We need to talk, succinctly and seriously, about what kind of country we want to be.

Do we want to be divided, anger spewing like smokestacks on the airwaves and in city halls and in Congress? Do we want to let vapidness and vitriol dominate our national discourse?

Or do we want to act like adults? Or, even better, like Americans, in the best sense of what that means.

Let's put the cellphones and the gaming consoles and the iPods away and start talking to one another again.

Let's value education over ignorance, reason over superstition, kindness over criticism.

Let's extend a helping hand rather than a middle finger.

Let's remember we aren't a Twitter handle, a Facebook page, or an anonymous name on an online forum, but flesh-and-blood human beings. People with problems, screaming for solutions. People who need one another.

ENOUGH, dammit. Enough.

It's time to get serious.