“Look at those hands; are they small hands?” the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination Donald Trump said during the debate on March 3, 2016. Trump added, “And, he referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.” During this presidential campaign, Trump has said some very stupid things. Yet, his compulsion to defend the size of his penis on national television without being prompted may prove to be an exception.
Luce Irigaray, the feminist psychoanalyst who situated Freud’s sexist doctrine of penis envy within “phallocentric” discourse, may be of some help in explaining Trump’s penis envy. To start with ourselves though, I don’t think that we can wipe our hands entirely clean. We love talking about penises. Just last week, an article was published about “Hitler’s Micro Penis” as if to say, “well he probably killed all those Jews because he had a small dick and one weird testicle” — as if the horror that was the Holocaust originated in a man’s penis.
This kind of reductio ad penis is exactly what Irigaray is talking about in Speculum of the Other Woman when she claims that the penis would not be such a privileged object in our society “were it not to be interpreted as an appropriation of the relation to origin and of the desire for and as origin” (p. 47). Irigaray levels her main criticism against Freud in arguing that the world does not revolve around the penis. Someone’s gender and sexual orientation cannot originate simply in whether they lack a penis, that is, whether they are “castrated.”
According to Freud on “Femininity,” the story goes that the little girl recognizes she is “without a penis” (SE22, 125). This blow to her narcissism leads her to resent her mother who is also without a penis. Little “girls hold their mother[s] responsible for their lack of a penis” and being put “at a disadvantage” (SE22, 124). Fortunately, the father then takes the mother’s place as the privileged object of desire because he has what the little girl wanted all along — a penis. Irigaray responds to this phallocentric fairy tale, stating “[w]oman’s castration is defined as her having nothing you can see, as her having nothing” (p. 48). For Irigaray, this penile lack takes on a powerful almost mythic force, “hence the impetus it gives to fictive, mythic, or ideal productions” (p. 52).
Irigaray may be right in pointing out that Freud makes it seem as if the world revolves around the penis. And lots of people love to make fun of the absurd story Freud tells about “penis envy.” Surely not all women become women because they really, deep down, want a penis…but wouldn’t Hitler’s micro penis explain why he was miserable enough to devote his life to genocide? And to be a powerful businessman and presidential candidate, your dick has to be huge, right?
Perhaps the most important lesson to take away from Freud’s (albeit sexist) explanation of “femininity” is not that women love penises, but that men do. That should go without saying, right? Surely, men have a lot more penis envy than women do.
Who can piss the farthest? Who can crush the most beers? Who has slept with the most chicks? At the end of the day, aren’t these competitions about penis envy? Contests such as these are just stand-ins for who has the biggest dick. They are what Irigaray calls “phallomorphic” sexual metaphors (p. 47), which reminds me of when Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were having their own pissing contest during the eighth Republican GOP nomination debate about who would be better at torturing terrorists. “I’d bring back waterboarding,” Trump said during the debate, “and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Trump went on to call Cruz a pussy for not bringing back torture in any sort of “widespread use.”
I’m not entirely convinced that Freud was wrong about penis envy. However, I don’t think that women have it. But Donald Trump certainly does.
Rep. Ted Lieu Urges Pompeo Defy Trump And Lower Flags to Half Staff For John McCain
Posted on Mon, Aug 27th, 2018 by Sarah Jones
Former active duty officer in the U.S. Air Force, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) is urging Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to defy Trump and honor Senator John McCain with the flag at half-staff as it should be.
Ted Lieu ? @tedlieu Dear @SecPompeo: You served on active duty. As a nation mourns McCain, it would be appropriate to lower the flag to half staff at all @StateDept buildings. I respectfully request you give that order, regardless of the views of @realDonaldTrump. It is the honorable thing to do.
Trump has refused to issue a presidential proclamation lowering flags to half-staff in memory of the late Sen. John McCain, so after being lowered over the weekend, the White House flag has been raised to full staff again.
Rep. Lieu currently serves as a Colonel in the Reserves and has won medals like the Air Force Humanitarian Service Medal and multiple Meritorious Service Medals, and thus brings his respect for a fellow service member with him when he urges Pompeo to do the right thing in spite of his boss.
Trump supporters often tell me that in spite of all of Trump’s faults, they support him because he supports the military. They say this but are unaware and uninterested when I ask them if they are aware of the great effort and support put in by the Obamas and Bidens, the Bidens had a son who served with great honor as well. The Obamas donated part of their income to support the military.
These facts do not register with the Trump supporter who claims to care about the military, and neither did Trump’s public humiliation of a Gold Star family.
But now here we are, with President Trump and many Republicans spitting on John McCain right after he passed.
It should be odd that a Democratic Representative is trying to push the Republican president to do the right thing to honor the Republican Senator. But it isn’t, because Democrats from the House, Senate and former President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were quick to issue moving statements honoring the Senator.
No president of either party has ever been so petty or low.
In the reaction to Trump’s pettiness over John McCain we need to realize that this is the reaction of every group whom he has spit upon; for example, the p*ssy hats Republicans mocked were the equivalent of former service members outrage over the way Trump is reacting right now. Sexual assault often causes PTSD similar to what some service members face.
Instead of judging the reaction as the media has been wont to do, the time has come to judge the behavior that is creating the reaction.
Over the weekend I realized it is not that this country is so divided and partisan. It is that we look that way because of the heated reactions to this president from various marginalized groups. Yes, we were divided on issues of race and sexism that that was exploited by the Russians, but in truth we are more united in our values than we appear right now.
Standing up against the kind of hate Trump enacts is not partisan or a divide. It is actually a great act of unity and love for our fellow humans.
I didn’t agree with Sen John McCain on much, but I respected him. Having just watched a loved one lose a family member with the exact same brain cancer, I’m gutted imagining how his family must feel right now with the President behaving this way.
There is simply no empathy or compassion in Trump. He doesn’t support the troops. He supports no one and nothing but the Trump brand, and the Trump brand is trash that spits on an American hero in public right after he has died.
At least he is not a hypocrite. All this drivel about what a great man he was. But during the 2008 campaign, he was a liar, racist, war monger and misogynist.
So says the liberal bible........
New York Times Salutes the Late John McCain, But 2008 Campaign Coverage Was Totally Classless
Look back to the 2008 campaign. McCain, seen as a moderate “maverick” by the Times and other outlets, was the paper’s clear personal favorite during the Republican primaries. But after he became the only person standing between a history-making Democratic president (either the first black president, Barack Obama, or the first female president, Hillary Clinton), the Times' treatment of McCain turned hostile, with reporters in turn suggesting McCain was too old or even constitutionally ineligible for office, a “warmonger” with “hints of racism,” who may have had an affair with a lobbyist and who spread vicious anti-Obama falsehoods on the campaign trail.
The petty little bitches are the dems and the liberal MSM. Proper protocol is for the flag to be lowered on the day of death and the following day for a sitting U.S. congressman. Just more disgusting fake outrage from the left!
The American flag was lowered to half-staff over the White House Monday afternoon. Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Katie Rogers, Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman
Aug. 27, 2018
WASHINGTON — In the Senate chamber on Monday, John McCain’s desk was draped in black and topped with a vase of white roses. The majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, rose to praise Mr. McCain as a colleague and hero who “spotlighted many of our highest values.” Outside, an impromptu memorial took shape as the flags over Capitol Hill flew at half-staff.
In only one building in Washington were Mr. McCain’s legacy and achievements greeted with anything like ambivalence: the White House.
President Trump, under enormous public and private pressure, finally issued a proclamation of praise for Mr. McCain on Monday afternoon, two days after the senator’s death, and ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff seemingly in the only place it wasn’t already, the presidential complex.
The day had begun with the remarkable sight of the flag flying atop the White House’s flagpole, while just beyond the building, at the Washington Monument, others fluttered midway down the poles that circle the obelisk. The president stubbornly refused repeated requests from officials as senior as Vice President Mike Pence and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to acknowledge Mr. McCain’s death with a formal and unifying statement, according to four administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
At midday, the drama was punctuated by the words of Mr. McCain himself, whose final statement to the nation was delivered posthumously through a top aide.
“We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe,” Mr. McCain wrote in a statement delivered by Rick Davis, his family spokesman and former campaign manager. “We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.”
Then, after the ire from critics, lawmakers and veterans’ groups crescendoed, the president released a statement to try to put the matter behind him, but it began with highlights of past conflicts.
“Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country,” Mr. Trump said, “and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.”
On Monday evening, he told a dinner of evangelical supporters, “We very much appreciate everything that Senator McCain has done for our country.”
The president, who Mr. McCain had previously said was not invited to his funeral services .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/us/politics/trump-mccain-funeral.html , said other senior aides would attend memorial events in his place. They will be Mr. Kelly; John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Along with Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bolton, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, and Bill Shine, the deputy chief of staff for communications, had urged the president to let aides take over the White House response to Mr. McCain’s death.
For much of the day, Mr. Trump appeared oblivious to the criticism. He resisted when Mr. Kelly called him at 7 a.m. and lobbied him to let the staff handle the response, a person familiar with the exchange said. He let Mr. Kelly know the day and week would continue as scheduled. Then he tweeted about professional sports, trumpeted a revamped trade deal .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/us/politics/us-mexico-nafta-deal.html .. with Mexico and hosted the Kenyan president.
At one point, Mr. Trump seemed so eager to publicly deliver a policy victory on the trade deal that television cameras inside the Oval Office went live before the telephone equipment had Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican president, on the line.
“Enrique?” Mr. Trump asked, growing flustered on live television as his aides tried to figure out the phone. “Do you want to put that on this phone, please? Hello? Be helpful.”
- [Insert: Conservative reprobates falsely accused Obama of an "apology tour." This conservative would take Obama back in a nanosecond by Max Boot July 20 at 2:26 PM [...] Conservatives accused Obama of hating America and going on an “apology tour.” Obama never claimed, however, that poor relations with Russia were the fault of “U.S. foolishness and stupidity” rather than Russian wrongdoing. Obama may have been naive in trying to “reset” relations with Moscow, but he did not say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “fine” person — and he did not endorse the Russian’s lies over the truths unearthed by the U.S. intelligence community. The Iran nuclear deal was flawed, but it was infinitely stronger than the non-agreement Trump reached with North Korea. Obama even looks like a fiscal conservative compared with Trump, who is ushering in trillion-dollar deficits. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142354589 Have they yet commented on this president's pleadings? That does cut close to home for him.] -
With the president’s attention elsewhere, the visual of the flag raised high at the White House made the rounds on social media, and prompted a statement from the American Legion, the nation’s largest wartime-veterans service organization.
“On the behalf of the American Legion’s two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain’s death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation’s flag be half-staffed through his interment,” Denise Rohan, the national commander of the American Legion, wrote in a statement that one White House adviser said caught the president’s attention.
- VIDEO - Obituaries By Robin Stein, Carl Hulse, David Botti and Chris Cirillo 8:36 The Making of a Maverick A look at the formative times and turmoil that shaped a historic American figure, with Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent.Published OnAug. 25, 2018 Image by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times -
As he publicly dodged questions from reporters about Mr. McCain, Mr. Trump allowed a split screen to unfold as much of the nation, including Mr. McCain’s Senate colleagues, publicly memorialized him on Capitol Hill. Senators rose one by one to pay their respects to a man they called a statesman and hero.
“Generation after generation of Americans will hear about the cocky pilot who barely scraped through Annapolis, but then defended our nation in the skies,” Mr. McConnell said in uncharacteristically personal remarks. “Witnessed to our highest values even through terrible torture. Captured the country’s imagination through national campaigns that spotlighted many of our highest values. And became so integral to the United States Senate, where our nation airs and advances its great debates.”
Senator Jeff Flake, Mr. McCain’s fellow Arizona Republican, implored his colleagues to learn something from Mr. McCain’s iconoclasm.
“We have lately wasted a lot of words in this town doing and being everything that John McCain was not,” he said. “We would do well to allow this moment to affect us in ways reflected not merely in our words but also our deeds.”
Senators from both parties appeared to embrace a proposal, first made by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, to rename one of the Senate’s office buildings after Mr. McCain. Doing so could provide senators any easy step around a potentially thorny fight: The building’s current eponym, Richard B. Russell, was a staunch segregationist who led the fight in the Senate against desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Many Democrats but especially Republicans, long since weary of Mr. Trump’s impolitic handling of the duties of his office, offered only passing criticism of the president’s ambivalence. Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who occasionally clashed with Mr. McCain and will succeed him as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters that the senator was “partially to blame” for Monday’s flag controversy. Mr. McCain, he said, “wasn’t too courteous” in his disagreements with Mr. Trump.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the chamber’s longest-serving Republican, sounded more regretful about the president’s behavior.
“That should not have happened. That should have been automatic,” he said of the president’s delay in issuing a statement. “You just do things that are sensible and sensitive.”
Flag policy has been a priority for Mr. Trump, even before he was president. Mr. Trump has attacked players in the National Football League .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/sports/football/eagles-trump.html .. who kneel during the playing of the national anthem in a silent protest for civil rights, saying their actions were disrespectful to the flag and the United States military.
This time, White House officials were reluctant to wade into the flag symbolism that had been so important to Mr. Trump.
“I’m not commenting on that,” Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, said in a brief phone call, adding that he was not working in “flag world.”
Mr. McCain, who had survived a Vietnam War prison camp and weathered the gradual coarsening of politics within his own party, appeared to have a sense of how the day might unfold. For one last time, Mr. McCain stepped in to call for patriotism over politics when Mr. Trump would not.
In his final statement, Mr. McCain alluded to “blood and soil,” a German nationalist slogan dating to the 19th century that has been resurrected by the white nationalist movement in the United States.
“We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” Mr. McCain wrote.
He closed his letter with a plea: “Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”
Katie Rogers and Nicholas Fandos reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Catie Edmondson and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting from Washington.
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