Cindy Sheehan claims her rage is directed at George W. Bush. I believe she believes that. I also believe she is wrong.

She claims to speak for her son – but by all accounts (except hers), her son volunteered for military service, voluntarily reenlisted, and volunteered for the mission on which he was killed.

So at whom is Cindy Sheehan REALLY pissed off?

It should be obvious – she is angry at Casey Sheehan.

Sigmund Freud had a concept he called “projection, which has been defined as a defense where the ego deals with unacceptable impulses and/or terrifying anxieties by attributing them to someone in the external world.

In many ways I think that explains the behavior of the media’s current patron saint, Cindy Sheehan, whose hate rhetoric aimed at President Bush is really meant for someone else who she can’t admit even to herself is her real target. To do so would represent one of those “unacceptable impulses” Dr. Freud was talking about.

In this case it could well be that Cindy Sheehan is projecting her rage at George Bush when the one she really despises is her late son Casey, who died as a hero in Iraq, precisely because he did die a hero in Iraq.

The more I listen to Cindy Sheehan and consider her past actions and her past words, it occurs to me she has always been a liberal, sheÂ’s always been anti-military, and sheÂ’s always been anti-Republican. It appears that she raised Casey in such an environment, yet despite that what does he do? He not only joins the military engaged in a war she bitterly opposes, but to add insult to injury when his enlistment runs out, he re-enlists although he knew that by so doing it meant he would be sent to Iraq where a war his mother despises is being fought.

Think about that. What Casey did was to reject not by words but by deeds his motherÂ’s most closely-held beliefs.

I’ve expressed this view a few places around the net, though not in anywhere near the depth that Michael Reagan does. Cindy Sheehan is conflicted that her son (who I do not doubt she loved with every decent passion that accompanies motherhood) rejected her beliefs and became an American hero – how can she hold close the memory of her first-born child while rejecting all that he chose to become? And so she directs her anger at the most convenient, most safe target out there – the President of the United States, whose policies (and whose election) she has always rejected. And in doing so, she can stuff her words and her ideology into the mouth of her dead son, and make herself believe that she is really speaking what her son believed – even though his every action shows that he rejected his mother’s politics and pacifism.

Get help, Cindy. If you don't do something about the misdirected anger that goes along with your grief, you are going to be permanently scarred by it.

Posted by: Greg at 12:06 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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