We are all, although unconsciously, looking for father figures. We were created to journey from our mother's womb into the arms of our heavenly father. Masculinity in its core as paternity is representative of the Fatherhood of God. Our earthly fatherhood, biological-emotional-spiritual, is secondary and derivative. Not so for motherhood. Maternity is distinct, non-representative, with an integrity and identity of its own, although of course received by God as is all creaturely life.. The role of the human father is to point his children to our heavenly Father., I have succeeded as a father if my children know and love God our Father. That is finally all that matters!
But no human father is adequate to the job. He must hand his children over to new father figures: priests, coaches, bosses, mentors. A daughter with a good relationship with Mom has no need for mother figures. A son who is well-mothered moves on and is not looking for a mother figure. Most of us fail to finish the Oedipal passage (from mother to father and then on from there) in perfect shape so residual longings to regress to the maternal embrace are widespread. Think of Hugh Hefner, Playboy, and the fetish for female breast. These urges are, of course, infantile and pathological and a hinderance for the man in his journey into paternity and to the Father. Consider: we speak often of father figures; never of mother figures.
Every man in a position of authority...CEO, teacher, policeman, general, president...is an image of the fatherhood of God. His task: to reflect, in his particular position, the Fatherhood of God. This includes, of course, competence in the particular task: a policeman must know the law, a CFO accounting, a priest theology, a coach his sport. But beyond that he is AUTHORITATIVE as just, merciful, truthful, certain, protective, steadfast, reliable, and life-giving. He does not have to be perfect because he is merely representative. His flaws and failings are not a hindrance but constitutive of his role as humility allows him to, with or without words, announce: it is not about me, there is One infinitely more just, merciful, truthful, certain, protective steadfast, reliable and life-giving: Seek Him!
A woman cannot be a father and cannot be a father figure. It is impossible. In a position of authority a woman can be more capable in the specific skills. Most likely she is stronger in skills related to maternity: nurture, emotional intelligence, empathy, team building, encouragement, inclusion, and conflict resolution. Exceptionable women with strong paternal attributes (strength, confidence, assertiveness, stability, sobriety, etc.) can provide that fatherly feeling: Golda Meir, Nicky Halley, Margaret Thatcher. But she cannot entirely provide that indescribable, intuitive, instinctive sense of safety, strength, stability, and order that comes from a strong, good virile figure.
A father must be strong and good. So there are two ways for a man to fail as father: be strong but selfish, violent, toxic and therefore lacking in goodness. Or be weak, lacking in strength.. Trump and Biden are representative of these two.
Trump: Toxic Paternity
Tall, strong, confident, aggressive, expansive...Trump is a strong father figure. He was elected, I suggested in 2016, precisely because many were desperate for that feeling of safety, strength, stability that he provided. But he is toxic, primarily because of his breathtaking narcissism. He is a strong father, but a bad father. He entirely lacks humility: he is the center of his own world. As a result, everyone in his world is at risk. His history with women and the way he speaks of them is particularly disturbing. Although my sense is he does not have the sexual addictions that afflicted Clinton and Kennedy, his boundless selfishness makes him more threatening. Particularly troubling was the occasion when he spoke about his own daughter as a sex object: absence of reverence, lack of boundaries, unbounded sexualization of women, and incomprehension of the tender-chaste-protective essence of fatherhood. That one verbal slip seemed to open a door to the unthinkable: incest.
Have you wondered about the psychological source of the hysterical nature of the Trump Derangement Syndrome? I offer a Freudian interpretation: anxiety about fatherly incest. Hysteria itself is a quintessentially feminine phenomenon: pervasive, immobilizing, non-specific feeling of being endangered, unprotected, confused, without defense or agency. It is the reaction of a vulnerable woman without masculine protection. Imagine if the very source of your protection, your father, is the threat to your wellbeing, in the most sensitive, intimate manner. Imagine that you are small and weak, and he is powerful, really invincible, and seeming unrestrained by conscience or compassion?
I am NOT suggesting that Trump himself is incestuous; nor even that he is entirely psychopathic in regard to conscience and compassion. He seems to have a loyal, affectionate and intact family.
Rather, I am getting at the nature of the aversion to him on the part of the entire Left. His policies are objectionable to them, but no worse than were those of Reagan or Goldwater. His moral failings (selfishness, greed, arrogance, divisiveness, xenophobia, incompetence) are common among successful politicians. But so many otherwise sober, intelligent, thoughtful people become agitated, incoherent, irrational, and vicious...hysterical...at the mention of the Donald.
I am suggesting a deep, unconscious, overwhelming anxiety that in some way they will be violated, not literally, by this powerful, vile man. They sense he is our father; he is powerful but threatening. They imagine a nuclear war, global melting, unrestrained gun violence, resurgent white racism1 They are in a panic; enraged!
I do not entirely blame them. I am happily immune to this anxiety but I could not vote for him. He is a bad father.
Biden: Emasculated Presidency
Beneath his jolly, sincere, charming demeanor, Joe Biden is The Non-Father as systemically weak, passive, incompetent, void of any moral backbone or core. In descending order of significance:
12. While his policy on Ukraine has been basically sound, he has consistently done too little too late. The obvious build up on the border in preparation for invasion should have elicited a flow of weapons on our part. It may have deterred the invasion; worst case it would have strengthened the Ukraine in their defense in the early months. Biden did nothing. Right now the Ukrainians are getting destroyed by superior Russian artillery. We have been slow in delivery. Worse, we have hesitated in providing the strong weapons that would make the difference out of fear of offending Putin. Again: timidity!
11. Lack of energy is a palpable characteristic of this administration. Compare the most energetic of our presidents in memory: Kennedy, Johnson, Regan, Clinton, and Obama. Johnson and Regan really delivered abiding change; but about all of these there was an excitement, a sense of direction, of movement and hope. His age and physical/mental debility does not help, but there is more than that to the lethargy, tiredness and vacuity of this administration. It is the lack of any moral core. There is no purpose or endgame or motive for exertion. He is tired morally and spiritually. He is loyal, of course, to the classical New Deal, big state liberalism of FDR, JFK, Hubert Humphry which carried strong Catholic values of solidarity. But this has been polluted by compromise with cultural liberalism and elite "Wokism" in all its decadence. It no longer draws upon the solid, working class values of ethnic Catholicism. He has no identity: he campaigned as a moderate, but has been unable to work with Joe Manchin for a populist economics of justice. He caters to the far Left, but he does not deliver. Biden is like Theoden of Rohan, the pathetic, enfeebled king in Lord of the Rings who was finally aroused by Gandalf.
10. His appointments and staff as a whole reflect weakness and passivity. Blinken at State radiates uncertainty and insecurity, the worst possible vices for that position; Buttigieg, insecure in his own masculine identity, is happily oblivious of the supply chain catastrophe that is devastating our economy; Kamala as Vice evokes no confidence at all; even the military has gone Woke, gay-friendly and seem to be no match for an expansive China. Trump's cabinet teemed with alpha males who rivaled Trump in confidence, ego and assertiveness: Mattis, Kelly, Ball, McMasters, Tillerson, Pompeo, Mnuchin, Carson, Perry, Miller and Sessions. The clash of these male egos provided an unending explosion of testosterone-based energy. If Trump hung out with jocks, bullies and tyrants, the Biden cabinet is the Wimpy Kids Club.
9. The Hunter story is a sad one: sister-in-law affair (there is incest again, this literal but not biological), sex addiction, drugs, Ukraine, China, and the way he has traded on his father's position. To say the least, Joe has not been a strong, directive father in his own family. Can he be trusted as "father" of the entire country. The two are not unrelated!
8. Our raging, devastating inflation was in part caused by the unnecessary, extravagant last wave of pandemic relief. He is like an indulgent mother who wants to pamper her kids, spending money that is not there. This is of course the way of the Left. Even now in this inflation he is pushing for more spending, forgiving the college debt of those who least need it, the highly educated.
7. Black Lives Matter: Joe parrots the racist trope, speaking of a "new Jim Crow." A few decades ago he was known for his "tough on crime" approach, when that was popular. He has changed that song with the time. Again, no moral backbone1 With BLM he further emasculates black males, making them victims of the stronger, white "man"; disparaging their own masculine, paternal agency and slandering the police at the same time. Two birds with one stone: black males and police. He tends to emasculate others in his image..
6 With that we have a crime surge in our cities. Blacks and the poor are the victims. Police are discouraged; retiring in large numbers; and reluctant to be firm in the face of crime. Prosecutors in major cities give a blank check to criminals. The primary role of state and paternity: protection. This administration is incapable of protecting the vulnerable.
5. The border is open, unprotected, swarming with unvetted immigrants including criminals and drug dealers. Again: a failure to protect; incomprehensible weakness and passivity.
4. His LGBTQ-friendly policy advances the deconstruction of authentic femininity and masculinity that he so perfectly embodies in his own life and governing: castration of the masculine.
3. His withdrawal from Afghanistan, abandoning those who served us so loyally, was nauseatingly incompetent and catastrophic. The epitome of a weak father: abandoning his children to violence and death in his fog of confusion, incompetence and self-confidence. This flagrant show of passivity and surrender has emboldened tyrants around the world: Putin got a green light when he saw us pull out. China is being tempted. Iran is building nuclear arms as they know Biden's passivity. The globe is unstable in a way unknown for 75 years because of this feeble president.
2. His betrayal of the unborn in their vulnerability, dependency and powerlessness makes him the iconic Non-Father.
1. A bad Catholic, he is non-filial to the Church: disloyal and disobedient, preferring his own way. A good father must first be a good son. He must imbibe the masculinity of his own father (and father figures) as strong, gentle, just, true, steadfast, protective, chaste, and humble. After a period of being well-fathered, the young man exudes paternity. Biden is a weak father, because he is a disloyal son. If he simply left the Church, in good conscience like Gorsuch or Pence, there would be no problem. But, emblematic of Catholic liberalism, he assumes the posture of moral superiority, pretentiously and piously waving his rosary beads and receiving Communion, while persecuting the Little Sisters of the Poor, forcing Catholics to bake cakes at "gay weddings" and place orphans with gay couples, and leading the genocide of the unborn...all the while carefree, cavalier, smiling and glad-handing in the most profound scandal and sacrilege. Let's not blame Hunter for his problems: he has a bad father who is a bad son as well as a bad president.
Conclusion
We are in trouble. We are fatherless!
Appendix
On a scale of 1-5 with 1 very weak and 5 very strong, here are my rankings of the US Presidents of my time as father figures. (My evaluation included emotional, moral and policy considerations.)
1 Joe Biden
2 Donald Trump, Bill Clinton
3 Barak Obama, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon
4 Lyndon Johnson, H Bush. Gerald Ford, W. Bush, Harry Truman
5 Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Regan
If you do the math you will see Republicans average 3.6 and Democrats 3.1. This makes sense: the DNC is more feminine in the best sense but also emasculated. The RNC is less feminine, regrettably; more masculine but sometimes macho in the toxic sense.
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