The assumption, by both the Left and the Right, that there is some connection between the violent political rhetoric being made by media and political pundits, and the individual actions of an unbalanced individual, cannot be documented nor made. No lines can be drawn between one and the other. No scientific causality can be found to indicate any connection between the two.
That being said, it is on a far away mountaintop that Bill O’Reilly stands upon, when he claims anger and indignation at the current level of vitriol, and the part he and his associates have played in creating it. To stand and claim to have his hands clean, when others on the left have made numerous attempts to calm and clean the slate is not just laughable, but telling of the truth that hides behind O’Reilly’s rage and anger. It is a truth which he has seemed to hide for a long time.
Unlike Rand Paul, I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and even though I do have an undergraduate degree in psychology, I make no claims of unquestionable knowledge based on that degree. However, what those with degrees and standing in that community would all agree upon is that there are things called ego defense mechanisms.
“…a defense mechanism is a tactic developed by the ego to protect against anxiety. Defense mechanisms are thought to safeguard the mind against feelings and thoughts that are too difficult for the conscious mind to cope with.”
When Shakespeare wrote that, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”, a fine example of how these ego defense mechanisms are employed can be seen. When the response one might give to an accusation is far more adamant than is rationally called for, or what one would normally expect to see from a person, a normal and possible assumption is that a there is something to hide. In the case of Mr. O’Reilly, and his over the top anger and rage, the rage itself is the overboard reaction to what he (and his ego) feels are accusations of blame.
It is this rage that is telling about Mr. O’Reilly. Like Glenn Beck, and his known insecurity when it comes to his lack of any comprehensive and formal education, and in numerous cases education itself, we see the “school room blackboard” stage, the “educator” approach to his topics, his creating of a “university”, and the parading around of his “honorary” doctorate. In the case of Mr. O’Reilly, his defensive rage and anger seems to be a reaction toward the guilt he feels in knowing that his vitriol has played a part in the current dialog within American politics.
He may deny it, but he has, along with others, played a part in the current political state of affairs. In this case, in which he uses overboard anger and rage, he seems to be attempting to protect his ego from his feelings of quilt. He does this by lashing out at others. His rage and anger allow his ego to be protected from the anxiety it must feel for knowing an underlying truth. By his taking the opposite position of what he feels within himself, he is attempting to protect his ego from feelings of anxiety that his guilt is causing his ego. What guilt we might ask? Possibly, the guilt that he may have in some form or another, is that he has helped to foster the current level of hate, anger, distrust, and fear within mainstream American politics.
Bully’s are bully’s because they are within themselves scared and insecure people. When we make others feel smaller then ourselves, what we are really doing is making ourselves feel bigger. Because these people we encounter in the world may not physically bully another, they still find other ways to bully another person. Groups of similar minded people are, in essence, a person of many minds. A group can be viewed by a bully as a single individual.
We hear this from the Right, as well as the opposite from the Left to a lesser extent, that “those liberals want to destroy America”. Those liberals “hate America and want it to be weakened and destroyed”. That those liberals “are communists, socialists, fascists, Nazi’s”, etc., but what Mr. O’Reilly and his cabal of like minded cohorts are really doing through these statements, is projecting upon others verbal accusations, in an attempt to protect their own anxious egos.
They are being bully’s so that their ego flaws are protected from what they know society thinks and feels; that hateful speech, calls for violence, irrational goading of a weak minded populace, and the injection of unfounded fears, do not further the dialog of American ideology and values, they destroy it.
Can what I say here be proven? No. Can what I say here be applied to all of the Right, or Left? No. But as a freethinking and educated population, even if this underlying understanding cannot be proved scientifically, we know down deep that what we see today with all of the vitriolic rhetoric going on in the American political dialog, that no good whatsoever can come from it.