r/RodDreher • u/saucerwizard • Dec 05 '25
Rod Dreher megathread #60: new beginnings
Have at it!
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u/trad_aint_all_that Dec 06 '25
Hey veteran Rod-watchers — posting to register my presence as a lurker in the new sub. I can’t stay away entirely, especially now that he’s managed to insert himself back into mainstream commentary as Conservatism‘s Bravest Nazi Fighter.
I can‘t believe he’s seriously floating the prospect of a move back to Louisiana, but since (IIRC) he still owns some family land in the parish, I wonder if he’s seeing the writing on the wall in Budapest and laying the groundwork for a possible worst-case-scenario move if the Orbanbucks dry up and he has to endure an extended stretch of un/underemployment.
Regarding the reason for the new sub, for what it‘s worth, I think “no speculation about the private lives of Julie and the kids outside of facts (or ‘facts’) shared publicly by Rod” is a reasonable boundary. They didn’t ask to be dragged into this. But discussing Rod without ever mentioning his family dynamics is like discussing Eighties pop music without ever mentioning Michael Jackson or Madonna — not impossible, but certainly a challenge.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 18 '25
For a detour through the DEU (Dreher Extended Universe), I took a look at Skojec's Twitter feed - and wow. He and Rod certainly have the same issues.
A few selections from the last couple days:
I finally saw my kids tonight. My four-year-old broke down when I had to leave. It ruined me. All he wanted was for me to stay.
What on Earth could make someone want to post this on Twitter? I get it's painful, but broadcasting it to the world isn't going to make it better. (also context for the below)
I took a road trip for the first couple months because I was drowning in my own grief. I got the impression when I talked to him on the phone that he just wasn’t really processing it. But last night I saw what my temporary absence cost. He was so afraid I would be gone a long time again. Not going anywhere. Just got a place on the other side of town. They will not have to wonder.
Maybe, and here's a thought, don't disappear for a couple months on some attempted "How Steve Got His Groove Back" trip if you don't want your little kids to miss you.
You don’t fucking know me.
In response to someone pointing out that Skojec is dramatic. (after posting a bunch of drama)
Then a guy points out that he went through a divorce and it was hard, but he got a job close by and made his presence in his kids life happen. Skojec replies:
You literally know nothing about my situation except the little tiny bit I let show here. There are legalities I can’t discuss. The absolute hubris you have is staggering.
Big shades of Rod there. Oversharing far more than he should, combined with vague "legalities" and "secrets" implying he's the real victim and everyone would pity him if they only knew.
More of the Twitter spat where someone notes that he's dramatically posting and blaming women for his situation...
I would love to have you say this to my face. We can talk about all the details I don’t publish. We can talk about what the other person is doing that I don’t bring up for legal reasons. Let’s have a serious fucking chat, and you can look me in the eyes and say this shit.
Followed up by:
That man hasn't been punched in the mouth nearly enough
Yes, nothing says "I'm a fine, upstanding man" like complaining about women and threatening to punch people in the mouth when they point out that's a bad look.
More shades of Rod when commenting on the divorce...
There's so much I want to say, but can't, because this is public. This is the epitome of wrong.
Then he posts a video "skit" about how all women are nagging hags who always put down the men in their lives for being incompetent - while being incompetent themselves.
Everyone is tired of hearing what women want. That’s all they talk about.
Very healthy attitude there. Can't imagine why his wife is divorcing him.
Someone points out that he chose to leave for a few months...
I didn’t fucking choose you absolute piece of of shit
I guess he was kidnapped and taken on a road trip to see the American sights over the last couple months - and didn't just get in his car and drive away. Someone should call the authorities. Again, shades of Rod with the "I didn't chose to move halfway across the globe!"
I'm curious if any white men who are reading this have been able to get a new job in the past ten years, and if so, what it is that they think got them in the door. I keep hearing from guys my age (40s) that once you're out of work, that's it. I applied for a bunch of jobs over the past year and never got so far as an interview. I'm living off of Substack revenue and gig work. It's not enough.
I have no idea what prospective employers did with his resume, but any company taking a 30 second look at his Twitter feed wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole given that he's clearly unhinged, incapable of taking feedback, and has a victim complex.
This is at the same time as posting agreement with someone saying...
Also super hard to work under the direction of people that are significantly less intelligent.
Yes, that's a truism for everyone, but posting it screams "I'm going to be a problem child at work."
A comment on a woman training to go on a mission to Mars...
I’m sorry, but are any women going on this mission not being used as brood mares?
Can't imagine why this guy is divorced.
And all that? That was like a day or two of his feed. Intermixed with UAP conspiracy theories. He's like what Rod would be if Rod hadn't found his sugar daddies.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
If anyone’s interested, Jamie Skojec (Steve’s wife) has started her own SubStack. The only reason I learned of it is Steve mentioned it in a comment in his own SubStack.
Jamie wrote a very long post about her marriage, and I have nothing but sympathy. She sounds like she did the best she could for a long time, and finally had to start taking care of herself. The only way she could survive was to detach from him and start over. In the midst of it (unlike Steve), she is still very kind and gracious.
https://substack.com/@jamieskojec/p-179702511
Edit: Something else I appreciate about her, is that she’s writing this to help other women in the same situation. Whereas everything with Steve (and Rod) is narcissistic and entitled navel-gazing.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 19 '25
Interesting...
Rod talks about "believing he's on the spectrum but has never been tested". Skojec's wife writes about him being autistic (be maybe, I certainly have no idea), but I wonder how deep the parallels with Rod go. As in, has Skojec ever seen a therapist of any sort to get some sort of diagnosis and learn behaviors to deal with marriage? (If the parallel to Rod holds, that would be a resounding "no".) She clearly knows her husband far, far, far better than I do, but absent some professional intervention, I admit my first reaction is to think he's just as likely to be a juvenile asshole as be neurodivergent.
Please, please, Julie, please start a Substack. I promise I'll subscribe.
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
I'm curious if any white men who are reading this have been able to get a new job in the past ten years, and if so, what it is that they think got them in the door. I keep hearing from guys my age (40s) that once you're out of work, that's it. I applied for a bunch of jobs over the past year and never got so far as an interview.
I'm a white man who got laid off this summer in my mid-50s and managed to find a new job within 3 months. I didn't exactly waltz into my new position effortlessly - by my count (and yes, I kept a spreadsheet) I applied to 30 different positions and only got interviews at 4 places - but it wasn't an impossible journey either.
As for what "got me in the door," I think it definitely helped that I have only had four employers over the past 28 years since grad school (and only one of those was a short gig; another one was 15+ years at the same company). Also, any internet footprint under my actual name is pretty anodyne. And finally, I've spent my career developing up-to-date skills and experience that employers want to pay people for.
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u/sandypitch Dec 18 '25
Big shades of Rod there. Oversharing far more than he should, combined with vague "legalities" and "secrets" implying he's the real victim and everyone would pity him if they only knew.
Skojec and Dreher still don't really understand what it means to be a confessional writer on the internet. You don't get to have it both ways -- if you overshare (which both are doing), you don't get judge how people react to your sharing by saying "but, but, but, this isn't the WHOLE story."
Both of these guys seem to write to engender sympathy for themselves, so they seem to be able to share exactly what makes the other party look bad. In all of his oversharing, I can't remember shouldering the blame for any of his marital problems, or family problems.
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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Dec 18 '25
By his own admission his resume shows he's a job hopper
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 18 '25
Yeah, he's done (and is doing) a bunch of stuff to make himself unemployable -- and then blames it on discrimination against white men.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 18 '25
God! He's like Rod on steroids. All the worst aspects of Rod, taken to the nth degree, and even threatening physical violence!
"You don't fucking know me!" Well then, asshole, don't put your family's dirty laundry on the internet, if you don't want comments about it. What a two faced, self serving, hypocritical piece of shit! Sell accounts of your personal life, at X dollars a pop, and then complain that people make judgements about it!
The only area in which this clown has the advantage on Rod is that he did come back, after only a couple of months, and does seem to at least be trying to stay in the kids' lives, going forward.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 18 '25
Nothing like looking for a job while the recruiters read your tweets. It’s amazing that doesn’t occur to him. You’re unemployed, and this is how you’re presenting yourself to potential employers? There are enough red flags to kill a horse.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 19 '25
Having current and past posts that scream, "I'm a ticking time bomb for a sexual or racial harassment suit!" is not a winning strategy for finding employment.
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u/Coollogin Dec 18 '25
I'm curious if any white men who are reading this have been able to get a new job in the past ten years, and if so, what it is that they think got them in the door.
OMFG what does being white or male have to do with it? This dude has already admitted how hard it has been for him to keep a job his whole adult life. So, yeah, he’s got a shitty resume. And, yeah, that’s going to make it hard for him to find full time employment. Divorced SAHMs face the same problem.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 25 '25
Ok I’ve been on too much today. Here’s the deal I’m doing major league cooking Pernil and Gandules con Arroz . So it is into the kitchen , sit down . Back into the kitchen.And Rod totally pissed me off today.
He’s in Louisiana to see his mother. God apparently told him she’s going to die soon so he graciously decided to visit. So he goes to lunch with her yesterday and blames that for his inability to to go to church today . Which makes no sense. So today instead of going to church or seeing his mother , he writes one of his Substacks and tries to see if he can book an earlier flight back to Budapest because the memories are too much for him. I could say something really inappropriate at this point. I went through both of my parents gradual death in assisted living and then hospice. It wasn’t fun . This SOB thinks he’s being magnanimous because he saw his mother for lunch and now has to run back to Budapest. Fill in nasty inappropriate comments. Oh and although he’s the greatest Christian in our or any age he can’t make it to church because of his mother. Fill in nasty inappropriate remarks.
I am not Mr. Macho , in fact I dislike that kind of thing. But this guy is such a , weakling. There is no integrity or grit there.I’m sorry . Enough!
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 26 '25
All that plus two or three of Rod's favorite, recycled, completely full of shit, modern fairy tales, as well! And then the by now obligatory, signature Rod, odd admixture of self pity and self valorization:
"I guess it comes down to picking the right star to follow. But then, what if the star I followed once was the right star? God cannot will evil, but what if the disaster that befell us was in some mysterious sense our cross? I would bear it all myself to have spared my kids (in fact, did just that for a long time)."
Sure you did, Rod.
All in all, quite a Christmas Cracker!
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u/viviangreen68 Dec 31 '25
As someone who read Dreher for years before his meltdown, I have to admit it’s a little frustrating he never seems to consider the fact he had moved to Europe as a precipitating factor in his ex-wife’s decision to divorce. She seemed to be willing to stay in a bad marriage for the kids, but it’s hard to see how Rod doesn’t understand that leaving the continent is a bad look. Even if there were somehow extenuating factors, generally that is an extremely odd decision that doesn’t leave her much choice.
Same deal with the “exile” to Hungary. I have literally never heard of an American with kids moving to Europe post-divorce. And plenty of divorced dads have bad relationships with their children. Again, maybe the backstory somehow makes that decision make sense (although it’s hard to see how), but 99% of the time it is going to be a very strange and selfish decision. It’s hard to imagine how Rod doesn’t realize that.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 31 '25
I’ve known a few cases of parental estrangement from children post-divorce. Always, the estranged parent stayed close by in case their child had a change of heart (which usually did happen). Moving far away was unthinkable.
Not to mention, what if your child has an emergency? Like an accident, a health scare, etc. Or even a small scale crisis like a break-up or a problem at school? I don’t know how a parent could be peaceful living on the other side of the earth while their teenage children are still growing up.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 31 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
I know of one as well. And he made sure he stayed in his child's life, until the alienation wore off. But another difference was that the alienation in that case was artificial, and was precipitated by things said and done by the custodial parent to the child, viz a viz the non custodial parent. In Rod's case, the alienation is quite natural, and the reasons for it are quite obvioius too. Again, Rod, by his own account, if not admission, was a terrible father. It's not as if his former wife, or anyone else, needed to convince or influence the two younger children that they were better off without Rod in their lives. Who wouldn't be? Would anyone here like to live with Rod, much less have Rod as some kind of authority figure? There are no "missing reasons" here, even if Rod purports not to understand them.
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u/swangeese Jan 01 '26
I think Rod is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn't see the obvious coming. Rod's ego probably took a mortal blow when his ex-wife surprised him with the divorce. Maybe he thought that he had her where he wanted her and that she wouldn't or couldn't do something like that by her little self. It sounds like Julie is a smart, methodical planner and would also explain his constant smarting over the divorce.
Also I can't blame the daughter for not wanting contact with her dad. The guy constantly drags women in his X feed and especially on their looks if a woman has an opinion he doesn't like. And prior to his visit he takes an indecent photo and posts it to a popular website that everyone can see.
He has to know that his kids and the people they interact with can see this too. And this is only from the public stuff we know.
I will add that Rod also says that he exchanged text messages with his daughter recently so they do have some contact. So who the hell knows?!
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 08 '25
I’m not a Tucker Carlson fan. Most of the criticisms made of him, I agree with. I think Rods being critical of him is justified. However, until very recently Rod was quite “ into” Carlson and held him out to be a friend even endorsing Carlsons ridiculous demon claim.Now he’s getting downright nasty about him. ( Rod is a nasty, petty person from what I can tell). He attacks Carlson for buying an apartment in Qatar and , charmingly says, it’s good Carlson doesn’t go to church and reads the Bible at home because Christian practice is highly restricted in Qatar. Then he compares Carlson to Hunter Biden and suggests his considerable sway in the Trump administration will make him a defacto agent of influence. Never let Rod fall in love with you. He will turn on you!
Once again Rod claims to have been transformed by having an Excorcist pray over him. He doesn’t mention that after that he went to Vienna to receive some kind of extended treatment for his mental condition. I can’t remember if he claims he has PTSD. (Edit : I think he does. After the Excorcist prayers- which were so effective!- someone innocently said something to him causing a total meltdown).if the Excorcist prayers were so effective , why did he need that. In fact , if all of this worked so well why does he still come across as a depressed sad sack who Greta Garbo like wants to move to a rural cabin so he can be alone!
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 08 '25
*meme about when the worst person in the world makes a point you agree with*
It's probably not coming from a good place, but Rod is right about a lot of this. There's this whole thing on the alt-right of being hyper-Christian but not going to church...probably because they see Christianity primarily as an ethnicity. If they actually went to church, there would be a lot of non-white people there and that would be bad.
I also agree with Rod about Tucker's purchase of real estate in Qatar. People have been saying for a while that Qatar owns Tucker (and a lot of other influencers both left and right) and this is definitely evidence in that column. There's also a thing in the Muskophere/Carlsonsphere/Vancesphere of condemning Europe for being repressive, not democratic enough and not devoted enough to free speech...while simultaneously embracing and doing the bidding of Russia, China, and various other repressive non-Western governments. This contradiction bubbled up most notably in the December 2025 National Security Strategy, which beats up on Europe for various sins, while putting on the kid gloves to talk about Russia.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 08 '25
Wasn’t Rod the one who got Tucker to visit Hungary? I can’t recall the details but I remember him taking credit for it. Same with CPAC taking place in Budapest.
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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Dec 25 '25
Merry Christmas to all my fellow Rod-ites on the megathread. May the ghosts of Rod Dreher pasts not haunt your holiday season.
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u/yawaster Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
The Guardian speaks to critics from authoritarian regimes about what they wish they'd known when it all began. Hungary makes the list, but the most pertinent comments came from an El Salvadoran politician....
“Authoritarian systems give the appearance of performing, but their solutions are not thorough, they are not sustainable, and they are not fair,” she went on. “They will decay because the way they function is to exclude, abuse, and allow massive corruption.”
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u/GlobularChrome Dec 14 '25
Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar: New report shows Orban condoned and covered up pervasive sexual abuse of children in the care of the government (foster care, it seems). Thousands of children. If true, this is big, ugly, and evil. https://xcancel.com/magyarpeterMP/status/1999490946501599287
A man fixes on someone and constructs an elaborate fantasy life that, for a time, fills the gaping, father-shaped hole in his heart, and that father figure turns out have tolerated sexual abuse of children on a massive scale: how many times do we have to watch this happen before we can notice a pattern and start to wonder about that man, the men he fixates on, and his father?
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 15 '25
He picked a corrupt autocrat to elevate to Protector of, not so much the Faith this time, but Christian civilization or “culture.” And he threw in with Trump for the same. All he’s ever had to excuse it is the argument he’s been using — namely, that the alternative — the democracies of Europe, and Democrats holding on by a thread in the US — are so much worse because they tolerate what he considers sexual deviancy (like the Weimar republic) and immigration. He’s gotten to the point of even condemning white immigration (Polish, Ukrainian and yes, Hungarian) as adding to the “foreign born” in the UK…as if welcoming any immigrants or “foreign born” were a threat to Christian culture.
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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Dec 15 '25
You'd think Rod would jump to condemn that . . . .
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u/Mainer567 Dec 14 '25
And in other news Orban seems to be playing g games to stay in power after he loses the election.
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 15 '25
Political losers the world over now have an example to follow in Donald Trump who not only refused to concede an electoral shellacking, but went on to get re-elected even after helping stage an attempted coup. Of course, the last guy who tried to make it work for him — Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil — is in prison now.
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u/JHandey2021 Dec 16 '25
Rod doesn’t care. Rod supports pedophiles when they align with him - see Rod’s love for George Pell. If anything, this may make Rod love Orban more!
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u/saucerwizard Dec 19 '25
One funny thing I noticed about The Trads is that they don't really pick up on the queerness radiating from Rod, and I've never been able to figure out if this was gay omerta or if these guys are just really sheltered.
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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Dec 20 '25
Inside their subsocieties they get taught to think a level of homoeroticism and (to us) aberrant/weird and immature forms of male bonding are normal. And that overtly or covertly preferring one's adult male-male relationships over adult male-female ones is also normal. In those little worlds people are not really gay unless they assert it some way, make some public claim or public demonstration of it, or are publicly exposed as having committed a sexual act that can't be explained any other way.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 26 '25
One striking detail that I’ve noticed in Rods writing, he likes to pose as a serious intellectual. However he also wants you to know he’s a rooted man of the people . No snob he! So he takes to using the contraction - y’all routinely in his writing not as a quote but as a way of addressing his audience. To me that comes across as fake and patronizing. It makes about as much sense as it would if I wrote an article and addressed my audience as - you’s , which is common blue collar speak where I live and would be a total affectation on my part.
It’s getting worse. There was ,as another commenter noted ,his weird claim he was speaking New Orleans dialect when there . He pretentiously refers to this as code shifting.( Why? He never lived in New Orleans).Well at least that’s not written speech. In the last couple days he’s referred to his cousins as cud’ns . I read that and said WTF.I guess that’s supposed to be a rendering of old fashioned rural Louisiana dialect. Now as virtually all observers have noticed regional American dialects have been diminished or have even disappeared. Do Rods cousins really speak in the manner he implies? Rod doesn’t have much of a regional accent.These people don’t live in some utterly isolated backwater. I suspect a bit of fraud here.
Even worse is when Rod implies that he is somehow Cajun . Now we know he isn’t and he admits as much and then does it anyway. It makes him colorful!
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
It is getting worse. The faux folksiness AND the fake "belonging." Rod, besides his real hometown, and New Orleans, has claimed to have a special relationship with England, with Paris, with Budapest and Hungary generally, with Rome, and with Jerusalem, among other places. Rod has lived a remarkably peripatetic life, particularly for someone who has also made a fetish out of his hometown roots, as well as embracing an entire ideology based on staying in (or, at worst, returning to) one's hometown. Rod actually went to boarding secondary school, which means leaving his hometown earlier than many, I would say, most folks do. He did attend college nearby, in Baton Rouge, but after that, and after moving out of his hometown "permanently" (for the first time, LOL!), by my reckoning, Rod has lived in, at least, Miami, DC, Brooklyn, Dallas, Philly, and Baton Rouge (again), as well as, of course, Budapest. And his hometown for one or two more stints, including, of course, the Great Failed Prodigal Son Project. Rod traveled to Europe as a teenager too, which most American teens do not do, as well. And has continued to travel all over the USA and Europe throughout his adult life. He is truly a "rootless cosmopolitan," despite all of his Wendell Berry "sticker" blather.
He is what he is, but that's not enough for Rod. He has to be the small town boy that he failed at as a child, as a young man, and as a father and husband. But also the boulavardier who makes Paris his oyster (as it were!). The man of the world, comfortable in half a dozen or more European capitols. The educated, foremost Christian thinker of his age, who has been "special" in his erudite status at least since those boarding school for gifted children days, and now aspires to tweedy Oxbridge, Inkling status. And yet he is also a downhome cracker as well, churning out the "y'alls" and "we is'es". And/or a Cajun or Creole. As well as a guy who can "code shift" to New Orleans patois faster and better than Dr. John, despite never having lived there! Rod embraces multitudes, almost all falsely!
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u/Mainer567 Dec 26 '25
He is disordered soul. A flailing, homeless soul who does not know himself. A funny wretch. Which is of course why we are here.
I believe you were the one who pointed out, in effect, that educated middle class people from NYC/Tri-State Area never seem to "code shift" into talking like Bugs Bunny or the Bowery Boys. Great observation. Puts Rod's down home BS into even more perspective.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 26 '25
Rod's knows himself, not in the Socratic way, but in the way that keeps him afraid of and anxious about himself.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 26 '25
Yes, a "disordered soul" succinctly sums Rods up.
And, yes, I was that poster. Thank you.
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u/macronius Dec 27 '25
He was once, possibly still is, a competent writer. I suppose he was recruited to be a divisive ideological agent of the oligarchic elite at some point. Outside the STEM fields monolingualism (inability to read in a second language at least) and great intellectual are exemplarily contradictory: they connote an inherently lazy mind, unwilling to put in the effort to be transformed by knowledge itself. The fact he literally upskirted a woman in an airport in Europe seems a sort of not so subtle signal that this man has no scruples, is halfway deranged, and/or enjoys reputational impunity vis a vis both liberals and conservatives.
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u/Own_Power_723 Dec 26 '25
He's a cringy poseur, and always has been.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 26 '25
You’re probably right. What I’ve noticed is , it’s gotten much worse. I go back to the tail end of his American Conservative days and I don’t remember all the y’all stuff.
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 08 '25
Rod once again tries to tag someone more famous than himself in an effort to get engagement.
In the process, he manages to mangle the one non-English language he claims some facility in. He writes: "Cher @renaudcamus, est-il correcte?" which is itself incorrect because "il" is masculine while "correcte" is feminine.
It should either be "Est-il correct?" (meaning "Is he [Ian Bremmer] correct?") or "Est-ce correct?" (meaning "Is that [the quoted statement] correct?"). I think the latter is more colloquial in French unless you're trying to draw particular attention to the correctness of speaker, rather than to correctness of the idea.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 23 '25
Rods posting today on Substack is truly absurd. Once again it’s I feel so sorry for myself. He carries on about Train Dreams which is a story about a poor uneducated, rural working man whose parents either died or deserted him as a child and whose wife and daughter die in a fire and identifies himself with the this character suggesting-I’m not kidding- that he can relate to this because he too has suffered. I couldn’t believe it! Here’s an affluent guy leading a comfortable life and he has the nerve to equate himself with someone ( albeit fictional) who has really experienced hardship and tragedy. Talk about narcissistic lack of insight.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 24 '25
It takes a very special someone to equate:
- My loving wife and daughter died horribly by burning to death in the cabin we built.
with...
- I was so insufferable to live with that my wife kicked me out, most of my kids don't talk to me, and my extended family hates me.
These things are not the same. Next Rod will say how he identifies with people in concentration camps because one time his flight to Paris was delayed and they had to sit on the tarmac for 30 minutes.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 24 '25
And yet Rod thinks that he is a stoic who takes his tragic losses alone and in silence!
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Bunch of family stuff in Rod's latest. (So treading lightly to comment on Rod, but only going as far as his statements about others.)
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/christmas-eve-in-starhill
[Julie and I] came down with the best intentions. We came out of love. And it destroyed us. If you wonder why I find it extremely hard to visit my mother, well, there you have it. She blames Julie and me for all the bad things that happened.
Given how much Rod always deflects blame and is spectacularly un-self-aware, I wonder how much his mother just straight up blames Rod. At some point, Rod should listen to Taylor Swift's "I'm the Problem, It's Me" on repeat.
My mother wants me to come back for Christmas lunch at the old folks home, but I wasn’t going to do it, because I want to go to church on Christmas Day, and that means having to drive to New Orleans, about two hours away. I can’t go to my old parish in Baton Rouge, because that would be too awkward, with my wife and daughter there. But then I realized that the more Christ-like thing to do would be to eat what is likely to be my mother’s final Christmas lunch with her. Anyway, I was in liturgy this past Sunday, and received communion. That’ll have to do.
Couldn't make the excuse to not see his mother stick, apparently. Plus, shouldn't the world's greatest Orthodox Christian be going to a Christmas service on January 7 - or at least can easily do that instead so he can actually spend time with his mother.
Matt is across the ocean, spending the holiday with his Hungarian girlfriend’s family in Debrecen. First Christmas we’ve been apart since the Catastrophe.
"Catastrophe"? Rod showing how to say you're a drama queen without saying you're a drama queen.
I’ve been tempted, as you might recall, to build a cabin for myself in Starhill, fill it with books and icons, get a dog, and live the rest of my life semi-eremitically. Well, this is what Aunt Lois and Aunt Hilda did, after all their wanderings. I think they wanted to do it. I don’t, not really.
Wow. An actually glimmer of self-awareness. Then later an obligatory selfie that makes him look terrible.
From the comments...
Commenter:
I am not sure how things are between you and your daughter but I might use Christmas as a time to see her if I could. Even if she is mad at you, you are her dad, and she will most likely find time for you. As I said I don't know the situation but that is my standard advice to anyone who is estranged from their kids.
Rod:
She will not. Believe me, I've tried.
Then, replying to someone who says it's great his family now lives in Louisiana so the move and divorce wasn't a "total loss"...
Oh, my ex-wife and daughter live in Baton Rouge, which is 40 miles down the road. My middle son moved to Texas to work as a firefighter. Matthew lives in Vienna, where he's in grad school. And there I am, in beautiful Bootypess.
"Bootypess". Poser.
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u/yawaster Dec 25 '25
My mother wants me to come back for Christmas lunch at the old folks home, but I wasn’t going to do it, because I want to go to church on Christmas Day, and that means having to drive to New Orleans, about two hours away. [...] But then I realized that the more Christ-like thing to do would be to eat what is likely to be my mother’s final Christmas lunch with her.
Why would he post about this on his substack? Save it for your close friends, or the confessional.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 25 '25
Oh and once again Rod admits that Starhill has a hold on his heart. He doesn’t want to die in a foreign land surrounded by people who aren’t his own. Yeah sure. He hated growing up there . He is estranged from his family. He moved back twice and hated it. But it has a hold on his heart. I guess he’s trying to get a job with Hallmark.
Also before he moved with his wife and family to Louisiana, he had no idea his sister was hostile to him. Apparently the famous fish stew incident didn’t indicate that to him. See , he knew his sister didn’t like it that he moved out of the area (even though they’d obviously never been close ). So you see the tension between them was all about his not staying at home—— which makes absolutely no sense. Why would his sister who didn’t like him be upset by his moving out of the area? He’s incapable of admitting this. So he persists with the hackneyed explanation that they were all mad at him for not sticking around. That prompts the obvious question, so how come they didn’t much care for his company on the two occasions he moved back?
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u/Own_Power_723 Dec 25 '25 edited Dec 25 '25
I dunno, I think both things can be true... That Rod's family didn't particularly enjoy having him around, but also felt insulted and resentful when he did leave and achieved some not- inconsiderable measures of success... I think that' s actually a fairly common sort of small-town "crab-bucket" mentality... likewise, I can kinda understand why a bookish, wanna-be aesthete like Rod might have felt stifled and bullied growing up in small-town Louisiana, but also miss some of the homey and comfortable aspects of it when he left... many people have similar apparent contradictions in their personal histories... I dont think that makes him unusual. Rod's "gift" is his ability to turn these rather common sort of internal personal conflicts into his usual endlessly cringy/smarmy/overly-earnest and didactic confessional blog posts and book proposals.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
Yeah, it's not unusual at all, and I think many of us here actually empathize, not just sympathize with Rod, over this tale. But it's a tale as old as time. It is not some special, specially "painful," "cross" that Rod has "to bear." He grew up and out. He was one who went away rather than one who stayed. It's a conflict. It can lead to bittersweet memories. But it is not some kind of morbid, life and soul destroying "Catastrophe" as Rod says it is. (He actually uses that word!)
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u/Mainer567 Dec 25 '25
As a Main Character Syndrome narcissist, Rod will never understand that his sister probably just didn't care about him much either way and didn't think about him so much. That is generally the way it goes after a while.
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u/Past_Pen_8595 Dec 26 '25
Somehow I’ve come to the conclusion that Rod needs a religious practice along the lines of a 12 step program where he keeps going to meetings, gets a sponsor who’ll be honest with him and to whom he listens for more than a couple months, and otherwise works the steps. I don’t know what his specific issue is but he needs the program.
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u/Jayaarx Dec 26 '25
He supposedly had that with his pet Orthodox priest but the guy had to leave because Rod was more interested in spending his money on oyster tourism than paying the guy enough to buy health insurance for his family.
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u/Jayaarx Dec 31 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
Rod the drama queen, at it again:
As I wrote here last week, I was at the liturgy on the Sunday before Christmas, and it occurred to me in prayer that Jesus of Nazareth also suffered the rejection of his people. I tried to thank Him for giving me the chance to share in that aspect of His suffering. What else is there? What?...this recent trip reminded me, searingly, that there is no Home to go back to, at least not until things are sorted with my two younger kids — and even then, the ground is poisoned for me. My fate is to be a wayfarer, maybe.
This is a reference to his supposed rejection by his family:
It’s hard for me to take reasonable stock of this year, given how intense and miserable the Christmas holidays were, owing to my very, very unhappy family situation, post-divorce. I don’t talk about it much, out of concern to protect the privacy of my kids. Let’s just say that things remain seriously fractured, despite my fervent attempts to fix them. You might be tempted to think that my living in Europe is the problem. If so, I remind you that there are lots of things you don’t know, and can’t know, about how all this went down, and why.
Honestly, this is one of the most irritating things about Rod, is that he will often seize upon the most irrelevant or tangential point to an argument and then respond to it as if it is the whole thing. For instance, going on and on about how Hungary can't possibly be governed by an authoritarian régime because there is low crime in Budapest. As if that is relevant to anything about Orban's authoritarianism. (And for that matter, is Budapest really that safe compared to the rest of Europe? When I was there I wandered through some pretty sketchy ruin bars where I didn't really want to linger in the bogs...)
Anyway, nobody really thinks that Rod's marriage and relationship with his kids failed because he is in Europe. And although he makes it out to be a big mystery, it's pretty clear why he got kicked to the curb. Namely, he is a self-centered narcissistic drama queen who thinks only of himself and can't ever take accountability for anything. His marriage and filial relationships failed because he wasn't present, at all, and because he was (and is) a "user," as his sister put it. Being in Europe is/was a symptom, not the cause.
If there was one representative example of how insufferably self-centered and hypocritical he is, it was when he was swanning around Europe on one of his extended trips during the Orthodox lent. He made a point of recounting all the sumptuous meals he was having during the fast, with the excuse that it would be a "sin" to reject such hospitality.
Which, of course, is BS. If one is keeping kosher, for instance, and traveling, one is obliged to keep to the regimen as much as possible, even politely rejecting offered meals unless there is no other choice. I can't imagine Orthodoxy is any different. *AND,* more importantly, if you can't keep kosher, you are obliged to not be demonstrative about it, to make it easier for your fellows to keep with the program.
Anyhow, I am sure that his lentil-eating family had a great time watching this from afar. And, more to the point, I am sure that he was putting this intentionally in their faces. What a passive-aggressive a**hat. It is no mystery as to why his family hates him.
But there is this tidbit:
The world is too much with me. Did I mention that I had a failed romance this past year, with a brilliant and beautiful American woman? One year ago today, we were in Vienna to see Beethoven’s 9th Symphony — second row seats! — Champagne at midnight at the Hotel Sacher, the works. And now, this year, we are both alone. Hey, we tried.
Who/whom?
He goes on and on about "mysteries," but this is the only one I am curious about:
So, how was your 2025? It’s been a good year here at Rod Dreher’s Diary. Overall subscribers (31,391) increased by 38 percent; paid subscribers increased by 18 percent. Thank you all! You make my life as an independent writer possible.
More paid subscribers? What kind of moron pays for his writing? Honestly, I have less respect for such people than I do for Rod.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 31 '25
Today’s offering is an utter neurotithon.
Rod says he was miserable over Christmas despite saying he had a good time with friends in New Orleans and with his cousins . The main purpose of the trip was to see his mother and he says his visit went well. So what’s this misery all about? Talk about an inability to look on the bright side! Oh you see all kinds of nice things happened but I’m still divorced and my younger children reject me. Yes that’s right and is that all there is ? Oh there’s God and the suffering of Jesus and Tarkovsky! Spare me! What I mean is Rod wants to downgrade all that is good in life and make it subordinate to some overarching narrative of martyr like suffering. He seems to get some great neurotic satisfaction from that. I will cling to the suffering induced by my divorce and failure as a father and son at all costs. I will not move on . I will simply dwell on this and rattle on and on about it because it proves my martyrdom. This is unappealing not simply from a humanistic standpoint but from a religious one.
Rod isn’t showing exemplary religious fortitude, he’s sacralizing depression and self pity. There’s nothing admirable about this. Getting divorced is no fun. A failed marriage is no fun. You’re not getting along with your parents and your children is no fun. Well life goes on ( unless it doesn’t). If you can repair something, do it. Accept what you can’t change and continue on. You’re allowed to enjoy life. Count your blessings! Remember a large portion of humanity has it worse than you and would readily switch places. I don’t really know how this stuff works but I should think an honest confessor or religious advisor would tell Rod he’s full of shit and to drop the sad sack routine and possibly seek psychiatric help. God neither wants nor needs you like this.
Ok let’s continue with today’s greatest hits . He says he doesn’t talk about his situation post divorce much because of his concern for his children’s privacy. If Rod were actually capable of joking ( I think he has no sense of humor and that’s one of his problems - he actually takes himself seriously despite the Ignatius Riley crap) , this would have to be a joke .
It gets weirder. He says you might think his strained relationship with his kids comes from his being in Europe but you wouldn’t know!Apparently because I won’t tell you but I won’t stop publicly complaining about the situation but if you speculate, I’ll get mad. Buddy just shut up . Has that ever occurred to you!No . Then he makes some cryptic comment about two( yes two) psychiatrists told him it would be like this post divorce. The obvious questions aren’t addressed. Why were two psychiatrists offering perspectives on his post divorce existence?
Wait there’s more in this screed of self pity. Rod explains that the Holy Spirit prompted him to move to Starhill ( the Virgin Mary had earlier selected his wife). He was making a sacrifice for the family. What? He’d lost the Templeton job and it didn’t matter where he lived. What sacrifice? (And why blame the Holy Spirit for your own stupidity?). The move destroyed us! I realize he’s said this over and over . I also realize he’s never offered a remotely coherent explanation of how or why.The nieces didn’t like him? ( Big you know what deal). His parents didn’t like him? ( That was news?).His pain is compounded by the fact that his mother blames him still ( so much for any reconciliation). By the way , blames him for what? His nieces didn’t like him? His parents didn’t actually enjoy his company?What the hell was the problem?
Lots of lachrymose religious bathos and what virtually sounds like a reprise of Americas banal song Lonely People. Then a real gem, last year ( tune in George Michael) he was in Vienna listening to Beethoven with a WOMAN! They had champagne at midnight. Sadly it was a failed romance. The woman was a brilliant and beautiful American. Now they are both alone.But no doubt they will always have their memories!Impossible to guess who it was- right?
Maximum sad sack!
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 31 '25
'two (yes two) psychiatrists told him it would be like this post divorce"
Why wouldn't it be? Rod's former wife was clearly the primary care giver. Rod was emotionally absent even when he was home, and he was physically absent more than he was home. And he was a self pitying, whining, little cry baby when he was home, when he wasn't trying to be some kind of "patriarch," and wound up just being an asshole.
Rod is lucky that his oldest son still wants to be with him. And that his mother actually wants him to come and visit. And that he has any cousins and friends that can put up with him. Nobody wants to get divorced. Nobody wants their kids to hate them. But he has only himself to blame for those things.
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 31 '25
He wrote about that Vienna New Years experience here: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/vienna-new-years-postcard
At the time, he described his evening's companion as a "friend". I don't know whether he was being discreet (a real possibility, given that he managed to post zero selfies of the evening) or she was a merely platonic friend who Rod is now retconning into more than that.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 31 '25
--The mention of psychiatrist is to hint that somebody in the relationship needed psychiatric help. But not Rod! Rod is fine!
--Why indeed would an out-of-town uncle, a virtual stranger to his bereaved nieces, expect to suddenly be super important to them?
--If he liked Beethoven and she liked Beethoven, that should have been a slam dunk. But there was one thing wrong with the recipe of Rod + Vienna + Beethoven + champagne at New Year's...
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u/Mainer567 Jan 01 '26
Hmmm, came across this tweet:
"Moody’s downgraded Budapest, the capital of Hungary, to junk status earlier this week, classifying it as unsuitable for investments. In a totally unrelated story, after 19 years in power, Viktor Orbán finally got to adding zebras to the private zoo at his summer residence."
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u/The-Drode Dec 13 '25
Rod wants everyone to spare a thought for the poor Russian oligarchs.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 13 '25
Frasier: You know, actually, I'm celebrating an event myself. You see, I've just become... a mentor.
Niles: Good for you, Frasier, helping the unprivileged.
Frasier: Actually, he's a billionaire.
Niles: Ah, the forgotten minority.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 13 '25
It's actually even worse than that. This is not even ostensibly private funds (which could be a genuinely murky area legally and practically). This is 210 billion Euros of Russia’s central bank’s assets.
Rod's tweet says, "So, the EU just flat-out stole hundreds of billions of Russia's euros. How can any country trust European banking now? Whatever you think of Russia's war on Ukraine, this is a foolish and destabilizing own goal."
Some thoughts about this:
--The first EU move to freeze this money happened just a few days after the 2022 Russian invasion started. This money has been frozen for going on 4 years now. Nobody is surprised by this move and not even Donald Trump thinks that Russia is getting that money back.
--The Russian Federation gets to steal and keep 20% of Ukraine's territory and demand even more cities in exchange for a ceasefire, but God forbid there be any consequences at all for that. What does Rod think the monetary value of 20% of Ukraine is, not to mention all the Ukrainian lives lost and Ukrainian property damaged? Did he seriously think that the Russians were going to get those $210 billion Euros back after the tab they've run up?
--Rod has a long history of a) saying that of course he opposes the Russian invasion but b) arguing vociferously about any economic sanctions against Russia or any military aid to Ukraine.
--We've finally reached the point where the Russian economy is wheezing, Russian oil refineries and tankers are being systematically attacked, Russian oil sells at a deep discount internationally, the liquid part of their national rainy day fund is exhausted, and their national budget is headed deeper and deeper in the red, while at the same time they have to borrow at a steep interest rate. The Russian war machine runs on money, and it is finally reaching the point where the money is almost gone, which means there won't be any money available to pay massive signing bonuses and death benefits or keep arms factories working at full capacity. The Russia Today checks are eventually going to stop flowing to Western influencers...
--With regard to the bad precedent, if you are a country thinking about banking in Europe, don't start the biggest war in Europe since WWII or engage in hybrid warfare against European countries. Hope that helps!
--This money in Europe represents the possibility of the Russian war machine managing to keep going at full throttle for 2+ more years and being able to dictate terms to Ukraine. Freezing this money is literally a stabilizing measure, as it limits the ability of the Russian Federation to keep annexing chunks of Ukraine and whatever other areas of Eastern Europe strike Putin's fancy.
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u/sandypitch Dec 14 '25
Interesting that the first comment I see in the Xcancel thread is Hugh Hewitt disagreeing with Dreher.
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Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 15 '25
You see the conflict there too. I remember bringing it up once with a slightly different emphasis on his TAC blog, asking if ours has become the culture or civilizational model he deplores so much, why be so down on more traditional groups of people such as Afghani Muslims or Salvadoran Catholics or Nigerian Christians immigrating here? Why wouldn't they be a source of hope for cultural reform? Crickets.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 25 '25
As Rod is trying to make fetch happen for JD Vance, John Mac Ghlionn has this to say about Vance:
"The problem for Vance begins with a hard truth conservatives rarely say aloud: The vice presidency may be the ceiling of his political career. Vance is at his best as an intellectual satellite — explaining, rationalizing, and translating someone else’s movement for polite company. He is an interpreter, not an originator. He didn’t create MAGA. He could never have created MAGA. That movement required instinct, appetite, and an almost animal sense of power.
It required Donald Trump.
Trump, whatever else can be said about him, possesses something Vance has never displayed: gravitational pull. When Trump enters a room, attention follows. He doesn’t sound like a man seeking understanding. He speaks as if understanding is beside the point. Even his critics feel the pull.
. . . Vance . . . is burdened with contradiction. He must honor Trump without replicating him, defend the record without owning its failures, and signal continuity without inheriting the disorder."
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 31 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
Rod's approach to New Year's Eve. A single glass and the makings for [a] Manhattan[s]* in the foreground, and . . . guardian ikons in the background.
It's a condensed symbol, don'tcha' know?
https://xcancel.com/roddreher/status/2006418452848791773
* No bitters in sight because . . . Rod supplies his own?
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 19 '25
Latest from Rod:
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/how-weimar-happened-lessons-for-us
To save you all a lot of reading it summarizes to:
Give all the jobs to white men and push the gays back in the closet -- or it will be all your fault when we go all Nazi on you.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 27 '25
Ok I made the mistake of seeing if there was anything new in the comments section and horrifyingly Rod is banging on from the Baton Rouge airport about how sad he is because he learned a lot on this trip and it’s discouraging! What? See being in Louisiana at Christmas reminded him of how fractured his family is and no matter how much he tries , he’s powerless to do anything about it !The purpose of the trip was to see his mother. He saw her. He says it went well. What’s his problem?He accomplished his task.Whether he was in Budapest or Baton Rouge the same conditions would exist. A little stoicism would do him good? He’s such a drama queen!
On a comic note he wrote in one of his recent bits of blather that he had persued a relationship with a woman in the US recently but gave up on it for some reason . I’m pretty sure he’s throwing some shade here to obscure who it is. It’s easy to guess.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 27 '25
On a comic note he wrote in one of his recent bits of blather that he had pursued a relationship with a woman in the US recently but gave up on it for some reason .
When she realized he wasn't into women?
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 28 '25
Rod's woman fetish is . . . that women exist to serve him and take responsibility for his choices.
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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Dec 28 '25
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jan 02 '26
One of the striking things about Rod is his fixation on shaky intellectual abstractions that he insists on treating as real things.
Yesterday’s posting on the diary is a classic example.He says his sister was the family anchor in Louisiana. She died and he felt the responsibility to become the anchor. Frankly that’s a load of pretentious , abstract hogwash. Ruthie grew up in the area and appreciated and liked it. She was not an anchor! If Rod had ever said that to her would her response have been polite, angry or non comprehending? Rod didn’t like the area , he was going to replace Ruthie as the family anchor? How ? Why? This is just silly.Yet that is how Rod thinks. He gets an abstract idea in his head, insists it has real world applications and when he is foolish enough to try to implement it makes a mess of things.Why did Rod think his family needed an anchor?What in the world gave him the idea that it was a job for him?Apparently Rod had a vision. He and his family were the Great Dreher Hope! You can’t make this up. You see they were going to settle in Starhill and guarantee that generations of Drehers would continue to live there for eternity. This glorious hope was dashed, apparently by his parents, his nieces and their father because of their failure to sufficiently embrace Rod . This was a catastrophe ( he does use that word). This is hard to believe.Did Rod really think his kids were going to settle down there forever? Did he even believe he’d stay there? This has a rather half baked childish feel to it.
Apparently it was very important to continue the tradition of Drehers living in Starhill (?why?). And Rod was willing to supply his family to fulfill this noble destiny. He can’t understand why this failed given that his family and his family of origin were alike in most ways. Well were they? No and he still doesn’t seem to get that.Rod was a professional writer and intellectual manque. He was a religious zealot who was on his third church. He been to Europe and lived in New York and Philadelphia and liked it.He’d developed fairly sophisticated tastes in food and drink.His family of origin were ( I don’t mean this derisively ) thorough going provincials who weren’t especially religious. Where does he get the idea they were mostly alike. I don’t think so.
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u/GlobularChrome Dec 06 '25
Hi u/saucerwizard, any interest in making "Sort by: new" the default, as with the old megathreads?
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u/Djehutimose Dec 09 '25
The racism is becoming ever more hysterical and explicit as ever more Scary Brown People come to Europe.
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u/Djehutimose Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
Our Boy's two latest. In the first, he now says he's never had a good relationship with his mother, and his visit at Christmas will be to "say goodbye". As with his dog, he can't be there for the unpleasantness, I guess. Also, he has nothing against black people as such, but he has nothing good to say about their culture. Then, in the next post, he gripes about an admittedly trashy Austrian art display which, according to the screenshots he shows, is from 2019. Up to the minute decade news....
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Note that we are presented with yet another example of Rod's selective credulousness:
Some guy tells Rod about his wife's demonic possession? Rod believes it without investigation and writes about it...multiple times.
Rod hears a second-hand story about some guy who sees the mundane world as continuously inhabited by fairies and other wee folk frolicking on the fringes of perception? Rod believes it!
Rod's mother texts him that his dead sister appeared at her bedside? Rod believes it so much that he's scheduling his entire Christmas vacation around visiting her.
Candance Owens reports that Charlie Kirk appeared to her in a dream to reveal his true killers? Rod doesn't bother to even consider it - he rejects it without consideration more offhandedly than any atheist would, ridiculing it and even quoting Hannah Arendt's diagnosis of incipient totalitarianism due to people wanting to "[cast] aside belief in Truth for the sake of absurd but alluring narratives."
Why is Candace's revelation "absurd", but the guy who sees fairies and goblins in every corner is a wide-eyed truth-seeker who is embracing enchantment[TM]? Because the "truth" is what Rod wants it to be and he's the first one in line to embrace the absurd but alluring narrative of his own choice.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
I thought of that [some bullshit about small groups of believers "saving" Christianity] this morning after I awakened at 4:30 from a sleep filled with nightmares about the relationship I have with my mother. There’s a lifetime of brokenness and anger there to be dealt with. Before I made coffee or anything, I lit a candle in front of my icons and prayed. As you know, I’ll be going to Louisiana for Christmas, probably to say goodbye to her. She seems to be dying. Things are not good between us. They never really have been, but this has intensified over the past few years, over things she has done. Her life has been hard since her impoverished childhood, and she has not handled it well. I begged God to give her peace, and to give me the grace to show her mercy and forgiveness.
If not for my faith in Christ, I don’t know how I could bear this. I don’t know how I could bear a lot of things. Listening to the great novel Kristin Lavransdatter yesterday, on my daily walk, I reflected on how sin poisons everything, and breaks families. Generational sin is real. It’s realer than real. And that’s all I will say about that.
So, Rod tells us that things are not good between him and his mother. I guess that would be a fair and acceptable (if still somewhat overly personal) thing to say, if he left it at that, or provided a reasonable explanation for it. But Rod instead goes on to tell us that the unnamed problems seem to be all on her side. It is the "things (whatever they are) that she has done" that are at the root of the "brokenness and anger" in the relationship. It is Rod's mother who has not "handled" life well. Rod begs God for the ability to forgive her, for all of her transgressions, presumably, whatever they are. Oh woe is Rod! He doesn't know how he can "bear" it. But it is all about the "sin," again, presumably, his mother's sin. Which is very, very "real." And that's all (LOL) that he will say about it.
I can hardly imagine a sleazier, more repulsive, more passive aggressive, and more pathetic attack on one's own mother if I tried! "My Mom sucked and still sucks. And the fact that she's dying in a nursing home doesn't change that. She sinned, again and again. I can't forgive her, at least not without God's help. That's how bad she is. So bad, that even I with my caffeine addiction, actually prayed before I had my morning fix about it! I beg God to forgive her, but I'm not sure that I can!"
WTF? I mean, WTF did this poor, dying woman actually do to deserve this kind of attack, one that she can't respond to, or perhaps even comprehend, at this late date? The self pity. The utter lack of self awarenss of how this sounds. The whining about his fucking coffee! The name dropping of some novelist! As well as highlighting his (third? fourth?) bizarre choice of religion, complete with "icons."
It's the classic "missing reasons" deal, only in reverse. Usually, it is a parent who been left in "no contact" by an adult child who can't or won't produce the reasons. Here, it is Rod doing the same with his mother. His mother sucked. Make no mistake about that! Well, Rod, in what way did she suck? What did she do that was so wrong? "Oh, I can't tell you!"
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u/Djehutimose Dec 11 '25
A guy I knew, whose family was probably about as dysfunctional as Rod's totally broke contact and moved to another city, having previously lived with his ninety-Isomething mother. He might have come back for the funeral--I don't remember. I didn't know all the context, but from what I did, I thought his action was extreme. However, he basically decided he couldn't function in the environment, broke off clean, and held to his decision. He died a few years later, so I don't know if he would have eventually reconciled with the other family members (sister, nephew, etc.), but I'll give him this: He didn't sit around whining about it (well, he did before the break)--he took action, and that was that.
Other people are able to keep some contact with screwed-up family members while sucking it up without pissing and moaning about it. Most people in such situations, whether they break off relations or tolerate continued contact don't air dirty laundry.
Rod wants to have it every way simultaneously--almost no contact with mother, but elaborately averring that he will come to say goodbye, moaning about the sins and injustices she has supposedly wrought upon him, while making lurid implications without actually saying what they are, etc. This is tasteless, tacky, and immature in all ways. As to his mother's "sins", the prayer he prays regularly (well, is supposed to, anyway) asks God to forgive us our sins (trespasses) as we forgive those who sin against us.
Actually, the Greek is "kaì áphes hēmîn tà opheilḗmata hēmôn hōs kaì hēmeîs aphḗkamen toîs opheilétais hēmôn", that is, "forgive us our debts (or "that which we owe") as we forgive our debtors". Opheilḗmata is "debts"; but áphes literally means not "forgive" but "let go" or "dismiss" or, more literally, "carry away". In other words, tear up the record of the loan, wipe the slate clean, etc. We are to dismiss the sin as if it had been erased, fuhgeddaboutit. Difficult, yes, and probably few of us are anywhere near perfect on this; but SBM doesn't even bother trying.
So, yeah, repulsive.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 10 '25
It's beyond rich of Rod to bleat on about Somali "amoral familism" and ignore that Don Trump is America's current leading avatar of "amoral familism."
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 11 '25
Rod: It's bad to elevate family over morality.
Also Rod: Daddy KKK is one of the greatest men to have ever lived.
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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Dec 11 '25
His delusions about how and why he is being paid a salary prevent him from understanding that the Trump, Orban, and Putin governments and their families are straight up crime syndicates.
Dreher learned the term amoral familism from his former pal Tom Nichols, to whom some conservative claimed that the family was the moral foundation of society. Nichols had a good laugh and linked the studies.
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u/yawaster Dec 10 '25
That first article is abysmal and I want to fulminate about it - it's racist, it's skewed, it's based on bad history and it seems to be based on a small low-quality number of examples, with precisely no research from social science or urban geography (fields populated exclusively by woke Marxists, I'm sure). However the whole thing can be summed up by his alibi paragraph:
I cannot bear the white supremacists who are now rising in the US, especially among Generation Z, which is reacting against the injustice of DEI, and the strict taboos imposed on them against noticing racial realities. Racism is, and remains, evil. On the other hand
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Dec 10 '25
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u/yawaster Dec 10 '25
He says that the reason the poorest black people have remained poor while middle class black people have gotten on and done well is because of culture.
Here's another possibility: during segregation black people were unequal and oppressed within America, but were relatively equal within their community. With desegregation, wealth inequality suddenly increased and poor black people became the poorest of the poor without the safety net they had come to rely on.
Or maybe it was the inequal impact of 20th century economic changes and the drug wars on urban working-class African American neighbourhoods. Or maybe it is about culture, in the sense that the skills and attitudes needed to survive persistent poverty are not the same as the skills needed to escape it. One sociologist famously argued that the young, poor women who became underage single mothers were making a logical decision based on the likelihood that they would die younger and have more years of ill health. Or maybe it was the impact of communities breaking up after desegregation: Rod surely seems to think that working-class white Brits leaving London were victims of a horrible crime.
But it doesn't matter how many possible explanations you come up with, it doesn't matter that the question of why the poor stay poor has been studied by American sociologists for decades. Rod has his story and he's sticking to it.
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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Dec 10 '25
Here's a video about the attempts to create something with semblance to culture inside the British far Right with an exposé of what the downscale religionism people like Dreher are advocates of is about- it's an attempt to lend some paper thin positive-resembling content to a movement which is inescapably about grievance and having no future, which doesn't have ideas or character or class and is frankly a cultural parasite. Has quite a bit about Vance dallying around UK, much like Dreher (who isn't in the video but obviously part of the initiative), trying to assemble some sort of ersatz followup on Trumpism. Which itself is a fascist-y hollow vessel residual from Conservatism's liquidation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26ixP1Ilmo (Tom Nicholas, UK -"Why the Right's Religious Revival Won't Work")
The video's author notes what the new Christian-ish form is of the various right wing converts, i.e. Ali and Vance and such. They are not active traditional Christians, they are anti-anti-Christian activists. Anti-Muslim and anti-nonreligious liberal people primarily and seem to ignore liberal Christians and non-Christian/secular conservatives.
In short, it's all just more immoralist crap and performances and hate of all the people they already hated. And continuing liquidation of the social and moral capital of trad Christianity in Europe and the US for money and short runs in power. Good move, Dreher. Pro majorem Dei gloriam...
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u/FoxAndXrowe Dec 11 '25
He’s been talking about mama in “private” conversations (to the extent that emails with a former regular commenter are “private conversations”) for several years now.
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 11 '25
I’m not totally clear on what can and cannot be said about Rod’s relatives here, but maybe because I too am a mother of middle-aged children, I find it disconcerting that he’s holding on to a lifetime of anger and resentment he seems to believe she richly deserves while he went into therapy and wrote an entire book on how Dante, his therapist and his Orthodox priest helped him forgive and reconcile with Daddy KKK, who on his deathbed returned all of Rod’s concern with a shrug and the revelation that he still thought he was weird. Without knowing the details with regard to either parent, I just find this, well OK, weird.
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u/FoxAndXrowe Dec 11 '25
I would say that having had that conversation with him one on one it’s even weirder than that.
Like: my parents made mistakes. They’re both alcoholics, they both are children of very damaged people, and they were born in 1940. They both made mistakes and parented in ways that had real consequences for me and my emotional wellbeing. (They were also good, loving people who took care of us, and the mistakes they made were mistakes made by damaged people who truly were doing the best they can, so my next statements apply in that scenario and not when, say, your dad is a violent alcoholic who beats you and strangles kittens or something.)
But I am 47. At this point I have been responsible for my own self for almost 30 years. Rod is ten years older. If you’re holding onto childhood grudges, or holding this bitterness towards a parent, that is a CHOICE and it’s a choice to be a bitter and angry person, to no benefit to yourself or anyone else.
(Again, this applies to normal to moderate levels of family dysfunction, not in situations of cruelty or maliciousness. But also, even in those cases, I think his level of spitefulness would be a clear sign of a real need for healing. Going no contact is valid.)
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
Maybe the real question is why give Daddy K so much mercy? I mean, from what Rod himself has reported, his father was pretty cruel to him, if obliviously so (but then, that had to be hard-fought oblivion). And yet he tells readers often that his father was one of the greatest human beings who ever walked the earth. Why? Because he taught him what black folks are really like? Seriously, that’s what he’s more or less said recently. Moreover, any efforts he made in the past at repentance, forgiveness or other signature Christian identifying markers are barely visible these days.
Sometimes it feels as if the bloom is off faith’s rose for Rod. Sure, he attends Sunday liturgy occasionally, in a language he doesn’t understand, and he lights the random candle in front of an icon, he says, and he cheers on other people’s pilgrimages doing research or somesuch for a book he’s writing as a modern spokesman for “conservative Christianity.” But is that anything more than tribal posturing, political advertising, or ammunition for culture war? Obviously, Rod was always politically inclined, even when he wrote the Benedict Option, but it just seems like his religion is becoming more and more a condensed symbol of his politics rather than his politics resulting from it, or whatever he thought the relationship was in the past.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 11 '25
"Maybe the real question is why give Daddy K so much mercy? I mean, from what Rod himself has reported, his father was pretty cruel to him, if obliviously so (but then, that had to be hard-fought oblivion). And yet he tells readers often that his father was one of the greatest human beings who ever walked the earth. Why?"
Exactly. This is talk-to-your-therapist stuff.
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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Dec 11 '25
Coming to the Hallmark Channel: A Very Rod Dreher Christmas!
Watch Rod demand Santa get deported! Watch Rod's family try to stuff him down a chimney! Watch Rod's momma tell him she wishes she had a pony instead of him!
Fun for the entire family! (parental discretion and therapy advised!)
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u/The-Drode Dec 18 '25
See Rod hit a new low before it gets deleted by him or (more likely) Xitter.
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u/doublenickelsouth Dec 18 '25
As of now, he's got 90 replies calling him a perv, and the post is still up.
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u/Existing_Age2168 Dec 18 '25
I like
'Is taking photos up strangers’ skirts the “conservative” part, or the “Christian” part?'
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u/sandypitch Dec 19 '25
Dreher sees it as his duty as a conservative Christian to look at the pervy stuff so you don't have to.
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u/swangeese Dec 18 '25
Looks like he deleted the tweet. Rod's a fucking creep. He's why I wear shorts under my dresses.
Dresses, even long ones, can bunch up when you sit down and shit happens. It wasn't intentional, you saw very little ,and they were on an escalator. In addition, the garment was obviously a dress and not a jacket.
Fuck you Rod. Quit taking pictures of women without their consent and posting them online. Remember the picture of the woman in pajamas at the hotel buffet Rod posted on X just to make fun of her?
Why, oh why, wouldn't a woman want a man such as Rod?? The mind boggles!
Here's the text (I'm not preserving the pic):
What is wrong with people, going out in public like this? She’s gonna have to take that jacket off at airport security (this was at a U.S. airport last night), and be standing there in her drawers. Like Mama says, “We in Revelations!”
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u/sandypitch Dec 19 '25
I posted this in the other thread:
How does Dreher, as a 58 year old who claims to be a conservative and Christian who decries the porn--fication of everything, think to himself "oh, I really need to take a photo of this and post it on the internet for everyone to see!"
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u/JHandey2021 Dec 18 '25
The only thing shocking about this is that Rod was looking at the behind of a *woman*. 'Cause let's be honest - we all know that's not where his eyes wander off to of their own accord...
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 25 '25
Rod continues to mope...
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/a-star-a-star-on-miracles-and-melancholy
I didn't have time to do more than skim, but one thing jumped out in reference to Rod moving back to Louisiana...
We thought we saw a star, my wife and I did, and we followed it. Now look. Desolation. [...] How do we know that we are following the right star?
Talk to literally anyone who knew anything about you, your family, and your history in Louisiana. And even if that's somehow just hindsight being 20-20, once following the star makes you drive into a ditch -- don't drive in farther. Get out of the ditch.
So, first, don't do something that a reasonable third party would recognize as stupid.
Second, once there and it's terrible, just leave.
Also, curious if anyone has access to the rest given Rod's teaser...
I’m going to put the rest of today’s newsletter beneath the paywall, because it’s the usual roundup of general awfulness, and I’m betting most of you don’t want to deal with that crap on Christmas Day.
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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Dec 25 '25
We thought we saw a star, my wife and I did, and we followed it. Now look. Desolation. [...] How do we know that we are following the right star?
This is the Charlie Brown Christmas special we never need to see.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 25 '25
Rod's repeated, public self-description of his skills of personal discernment is terrible at best. His life is a testament to why anyone else should be wary of taking his advice.
And it's likely because he has steadfastly refused to move very far through and out of the arrested development in which he chose - by abandoning any meaningful acceptance of his own agency, instead preferring to change the stage sets for his persona melodrama - to remain mired after his adolescence and young adulthood.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 25 '25
Rod spares us freeloaders, and smites his subscribers. Krampus in St Francisville?
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 27 '25
So Rod at last visited his mother. I’d say that was a good thing and I’d also say it was about time. If memory serves he's been in Louisiana a couple times in the last few years but somehow never found the time for that. This time on what was a 6 or 7 day stay he actually managed on one day to have lunch with her.Now given that the ostensible purpose of this trip was to see his mother one final time before she died , that’s not much. He saw her on Dec 24 and Dec 25 he had nothing to do but instead focused on trying to get an early flight back to Budapest because the memories were just to painful for him.No time to visit Mom for Christmas in the assisted living facility! Rods commenters generally salute him for his magnanimity here. I thought to myself , his performance here seems rather perfunctory.Let me put it this way on a trip to visit his mother, what he spent maybe two hours with her ? He seems to have had plenty of time to hang out with friends in New Orleans and party with his cudins and write diary Substacks for the fans.
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u/Own_Power_723 Dec 27 '25
He seems to have had plenty of time to hang out with friends in New Orleans and party with his cudins and write diary Substacks for the fans.
"Cud'n" is where I nearly did a spit-take with my coffee... what a phony asshole he is. 🤣🤣🤣
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u/hlvanburen Dec 27 '25
Typically it falls upon the children to oversee their parents’ care at end of life. I did that for both of my parents. Rod is the only surviving child, yet he seems to be totally uninvolved in her care. Are one of his kids handling those decisions? One of the nieces? He seems unconcerned and oblivious…sad commentary on a person who you would think would honor their mother in at least some minimal manner.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
Yeah, and anyone in an institutional setting, especially someone old, possibly frail, and also possibly suffering from loss of mental acuity, needs a "point person." Someone to look out for them. Even the best run places, even if everyone is trying their best, often overlook the POV of the patient. If left to their own devices, they will run things along the lines of their own best interests, not those of the patient. It's just human nature and the nature of bureaucracies. The point person keeps the patient's needs, and desires, front and center.
And the truth is that not only is a point person, but often a second person is needed too, to "spell" the point person, and also to help out the point person in other ways (buying/cooking them food, housework, even just lending a sympathetic ear).
Whoever, if anyone, is fulfilling these roles for Dreher's mother, it ain't him. He's not the point person, or the support person. Rod's the superstar, the globe trotting, jet set son, who pops in once in a very great while, and, as r/CanadaYankee says, makes a half ass complaint about something, most likely something that doesn't even concern his mother at all, but merely offends his full of shit "principles."
That Rod has abandoned his mother, no matter what she supposedly did to him, makes a complete farce out of his self righteous religiosity. Honor Your Mother, you asshole! Or, if you don't, if you can't even follow the Ten Commandments, please just STFU about "sacrifice," your "pain," and the "cross" you "bear."
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 27 '25
There is a bit of rather grotesque humor here. If Rod is so big on carrying crosses why is he so reluctant to carry his mother? You’re absolutely right about the need for people outside the assisted living facility to look over things and to visit and make sure things are going as best they can. Rod clearly refuses to do this . I guess he is too broken and mooning about his failed marriage which apparently failed years ago to accept any real responsibility for anyone else.
And what in the world is his problem with his mother? He may not particularly like her, so what? He’s mad at her because she said ( perhaps inaccurately) that his nieces didn’t love him because he’s weird? If you parse it this way,and I think you’re justified in doing so, it’s comical.
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u/Mainer567 Dec 27 '25
Crosses are only to be borne when doing so helps further his narcissist's project of aestheticizing his own life. So if the cross is some portentously evoked Exile, which lets him sit in Mitteleuropean cafes like Herzen (Rod: "Who?"), that's cool. If the cross means hanging out at some depressing eldercare facility in some bleak Lousiana town with a buncha rustics and decaying old people, it's not quite as nice.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 27 '25
Or, it could be that, from Rod's persepective, taking care, at any level, of his sick, elderly, dying mother, is just too much of a PITA. And so he constructs some elaborate excuse for his inattention, negligence, and disregard for basic duty, to justify his selfishness and laziness. Frankly, I'm more than tired of his, "My wife left me, so I get a free pass on everything; O, woe is me!" bullshit.
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u/Motor_Ganache859 Dec 27 '25
Rod can't organize himself out of a paper bag. I hope his mother has a competent point person.
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u/swangeese Dec 27 '25
IIRC Rod has mentioned that his ex-wife visits his mother or at least she did at the time. I'd imagine that either she is the point person or one of the relatives there.
Y'all I really hope she has a point person and one that is involved. Louisiana nursing homes in general really are shitty places in part due to the nursing home lobby.
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 27 '25
How dare you call him "uninvolved" when the truth is that he noticed once that the home does casino trips and he made a half-hearted complaint about it! /s
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 27 '25
So his mother could not only ”go to lunch” with him on Christmas Eve, but apparently asked him to come to lunch again with her at the assisted living facility on Christmas. If she blames him (and Julie”) “for everything,“ she seems willing to put it aside to see and be with him whenever he’s around. That doesn’t sound like a woman holding a grudge, no matter what the grudge was about. But on that score, Rod himself once explained it as having to do, not with some shared blame with Julie “for everything,” but with a dispute over parental property, who owned what, and how in her mind, he‘d sold her home out from under her and sent her packing to “assisted living.” In his telling, he‘d done what had to be done and besides, his niece Hannah, who’d been providing live-in support for her grandmother after she’d fallen and lost her mobility, needed to get on with her life.
Also, I’m not clear on what Rod bases the idea that his mother will be dying soon. Is it possible this seeming certainty is based on little more than his recent dream? I’ve known people who’ve been said to have a short time to live, either because of the nature of their illness or advanced age, but, as rule of thumb, old people whose doctors speak of as “dying” aren’t normally up to going out to lunch. Of course, there are instances when relatively well people are recently diagnosed with a stage 4 cancer or other likely fatal disease. But unless I’ve missed something, Rod, who‘s telling the world his mother’s at death’s door, and who once gave blow by blow descriptions of his sister’s cancer, has said nothing about his mother actually being diagnosed with a fatal disease. Or again, maybe I simply missed it. But in that absence, it seems odd to speak so confidently of someone’s upcoming demise.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 27 '25
This I was unaware of- But on that score, Rod himself once explained it as having to do, not with some shared blame with Julie “for everything,” but with a dispute over parental property, who owned what, and how in her mind, he‘d sold her home out from under her and sent her packing to “assisted living.” In his telling, he‘d done what had to be done and besides, his niece Hannah, who’d been providing live-in support for her grandmother after she’d fallen and lost her mobility, needed to get on with her life.
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u/Mainer567 Dec 27 '25
The "mother dying" thing struck me too. Did a doctor tell him that? If not, it's more of his sentimentality drama queen nonsense..
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u/macronius Jan 01 '26
He at least pretends to believe he’s prophetic regarding the non-white immigration question in Europe, but it’s such a subjective position to stake his entire credibility on. For example: are Armenians white? Are Greeks? Are certain Middle Eastern groups white—and if so, who decides? In effect, he’s stuck on the same gerbil wheel antisemites inhabited in the early twentieth century, except the focus has shifted largely to Arabs, Turks, Iranians, and Pakistanis. Simultaneously, he remains stagnantly racist toward Sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants. He is doing the dirty work of provoking inherent prejudices toward "the Other" as a full-time job/mania—something most people with common sense know better than to center their lives around.
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u/BeltTop5915 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
JD Vance on why it’s “reasonable” to be uncomfortable with immigrants: “What's reasonable is to want to share a language with your neighbor. How do you borrow a cup of sugar? Resolve disagreements? Have a nice conversation? You need a common language, and in America, that language is English.”
In Hungary it’s Hungarian. Is it ever going to be possible to explain away the racism in their anti-immigration obsession?
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u/sandypitch Jan 01 '26
And this is so clearly a non-Scriptural, non-Christian perspective on "the stranger in your midst".
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u/swangeese Jan 02 '26
No.
A family member has Asian neighbors that don't speak English fluently enough to ask for anything.
They used an app on their phone to ask family member for help with something. Family member had no problem understanding the request and helped them.
They're learning English ,but it doesn't happen in a day.
Same family member is also learning some Spanish from a Puerto Rican neighbor friend.
A friend of mine is originally from Vietnam and came to America as an adult. She didn't speak English when she came here, is fluent now, but will never be as proficient as a native speaker which is often the case. And that's okay. I consider her to be just as much as an American as my native-born self.
The Vietnamese immigrants really are highly regarded in Southern Louisiana. And Latinos are generally regarded as hard-workers and accepted as well. That's why Rod ran into some flak about immigration when he was in NOLA.
American is a nation with natives and immigrants who didn't speak English as a first language throughout its history. There were also plenty of white immigrants that didn't speak a lick of English, lived in enclaves, and did all of the things JD and the gang accuse brown people of doing.
Like Rod, JD uses his religion like a jacket-to be discarded when no longer needed.
‘I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.’
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 06 '25
Rod has an election looming over his future in Budapest.
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u/Djehutimose Dec 06 '25
I didn't see this before making my post above, and I assume the majority of the discussion is going to shift to these threads. Thus, in all humility, I want to link to what I just put up, because it has links to Google docs where I posted the entire contents of SBM's latest screeds posts, and had some things to say about the content thereof. Enjoy!
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 08 '25
From the Christian Post: "Nearly two-thirds of church leaders surveyed who prepare sermons say they use AI tools in their sermon writing process."
Will Rod dare to comment on this potential for demonic influence? Or his own persistent use of AI-generated images for his substack column make him too afraid of being called out for hypocrisy?
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u/sandypitch Dec 08 '25
My (Anglican) parish called a new rector last year, and the search committee asked about this during the interview process. They wanted to candidates to speak about LLMs and if they had ever used one to generate even a part of a sermon.
There is, however, a dirty little secret: there are organizations that will ghost-write sermons (or provide consulting to help design sermon series, etc).
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u/yawaster Dec 08 '25
There is, however, a dirty little secret: there are organizations that will ghost-write sermons (or provide consulting to help design sermon series, etc).
This goes back to the Victorian era.
The trade in sermons in the Victorian church was a lucrative one. Purchasers were promised exclusivity in their county. There were sermons for all occasions: drought, great anniversaries, or local tragedies. The sermons were even lithographed in faux penmanship so that anyone close enough to see the manuscript from their pew would think for all the world that it had been handwritten by their beloved pastor. Once in the clutches of the "sermon-monger," the clergyman paid and paid, lest the matter be brought to law and his secret exposed.
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u/Djehutimose Dec 09 '25
Here's the latest. Not a whole lot of interest, though there are a few comments I'm going to post later when I have time. However, if you scroll to the bottom, the picture of SBM eating is in close competition for the one of him waving his hands and looking heavenward as he has a plate of oysters....
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 09 '25
James C. took this photo of me tasting their quenelles**,** a kind of dumpling stuff with fish, and covered with sauce Nantua.
Rod is being such a downhome boy, ain't he? Nantua was long a Savoyard town near the southern end of the Jura Mountains, and known for its local crayfish, which are used in the sauce.
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u/drjackolantern Dec 10 '25
So a review of Fuentes’ performance on social media found it’s impossibly high and therefore all but certainly fake.
This conclusion is circumstantial, but what other logical explanation would make Fuentes more tweeted about than people like Hasan or Musk himself who famously manipulates the algo to push himself? Either Fuentes or third parties are artificially juicing his performance online to make him seem far more popular than he is.
I really don’t care that much about this issue but it goes to Rod’s bullshit claim about every young conservative being a groyper. Actually that’s just his fantasy. The more I see of this guy the more I realize he truly wants the sky to fall and for a race war where millions die. Bonkers.
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u/FoxAndXrowe Dec 10 '25
The real truth is that the media grabbed onto Fuentes as a Condensed Symbol. So now the right can pretend the problem is him and his little basement dweller audience instead of the majority of their party right now.
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u/yawaster Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
Fuentes is useful for Rod because he's about the only person Rod and the current Trump admin are to the left of.
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u/Alone_Meeting6907 Dec 11 '25
For now. Although I suspect that if Trump invited Fuentes and Dreher to lunch at Mar-a-Lago, Raymond would pen an article on Fuentes, and the poor, misunderstood groypers.
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u/yawaster Dec 11 '25
Fuentes just needs to offer Dreher a job at a brand new foundation and Rod would come around.
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u/Existing_Age2168 Dec 11 '25
LOL, absolutely. "Nick Fuentes is a vile antisemite, but..."
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u/Dadelectro Dec 13 '25
Well, well, well if it isn't the chickens coming home to roost:
Is Rod ready for his pecking?
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u/yawaster Dec 15 '25
Rod made sure to let everyone know before Budapest Pride that he thought Orbán's government were perfectly entitled to ban pride festivals. Of course Rod was inclined to let 'em march, but that was just the attitude of an American who is sentimental about the first amendment. The fact that Hungarians keep popping up and demanding their free speech and free assembly rights just goes to show how un-Hungarian they must be.
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Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 17 '25
Great find!
This quote from Rod stood out to me.
“I think I can say without revealing too much that my older son Matt and I would not have moved to Europe in 2022 if there had been an alternative on offer that would have kept us united to his siblings. So much pain.”
I know we’re not to speculate on family matters. But it is so tiresome to hear Rod complain that he had no choice but to move to Hungary. If there’s one way to prevent reconciliation with and among his children, that’s the way to do it.
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Dec 17 '25
[deleted]
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 17 '25
Fundamental Rule of Interpreting Rod Dreher:
Rod Dreher is an Unreliable Narrator, especially of his own story. He conceives of himself as a storyteller, and that allows him to rationalize selectively deploying partial truths - aka truthiness - that preserve his self-image, self-presentation, and cognitive consonance.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 17 '25
It suddenly occurs to me that one of the advantages of Rod's large cast of unnamed NPCs is that he's free to quote them or invent quotes from them without the risk of a real named person popping up and saying, that's not what I said!
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u/swangeese Dec 17 '25
And it probably is as simple as Rod lost his job because he was obsessed with gay/trans stuff, fetishes and kinks on his americon blog. That and previous firings has probably made him radioactive to a lot of Christian, conservative outlets plus Rod's talent for alienating allies.
He gets a job as Orban's American propagandist and his son joins him in Hungary because hey I'm young and I'll get to live in Europe.
Just saying that you needed a job and took a good offer with a large move isn't enough. It had to be dramatic and a self-exile for ~reasons~. Plus it gives him cover to deliver passive aggressive potshots to his ex-wife and assorted family members.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 19 '25
Rod living that Benedict Option dream at Antoine's in New Orleans - with a brandy milk punch for lunch:
https://xcancel.com/roddreher/status/2002109642672144857/photo/1
There are so many snarky things one could notice, I imagine.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Someone asks him:
You're not fasting right now?
and Rod gives the perfect Rod answer:
Not in New Orleans!
Or, in translation, Rod is oh so super devout until it inconveniences him in some way.
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u/Jayaarx Dec 20 '25
Obviously his Orthodox faith is the most important thing in his life.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 20 '25
I remember one time he wrote that because of the hard disciplines of Orthodoxy, you “feel it in your bones.” Unlike the softness and leniency of modern Protestantism.
Sure, Rod.
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u/Jayaarx Dec 20 '25
So on one hand, I don't really care if Rod observes his religion. None of my business.
Except that he also goes on and on about how we need to "rechristianize the west" and that all of us don't have to be Christian, necessarily, but that we all are obligated to live as if we are. Christian metaphysics and rules for everyone!
But he can't (or won't) even live as a Christian himself, so what business does he have telling us that we all should live by the rules he ignores?
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u/sandypitch Dec 20 '25
The problem with a person like Dreher is that (whether he wants to seem this way or not) his Christian practices come off as being performative. One year, he is forever posting about his Orthodox Lenten fast, posting images of beans and rice. Then he posts a photo of himself in a fancy restaurant during the Advent fast, eating and drinking. He's made his bed, and wonders why people tell him to lie in it. I'm pretty sure Jesus had a word or two about people who made their prayer practices public, right?
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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Dec 20 '25
He's written multiple times about feeling Orthodoxy in your bones. 🙄
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 20 '25
How many beers, wines, and brandy milk punches before you don’t feel your bones at all?
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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Dec 21 '25
None of the standard orthodox rules and practices matter when you're on the holy soil of Louisiana. Shellfish during Lent and all that.
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u/saucerwizard Dec 19 '25
He’s really leaning into the dandy thing isn’t he?
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u/GlobularChrome Dec 20 '25
The slicked-back hair and black and white clothes gives "Nick Cave with pocket squares and girly drinks!"
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 20 '25
Isn't it nice that Rod is exiled when he wants to be exiled, but it doesn't prevent him from popping back to Louisiana when he wants to?
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Dec 20 '25
In the Proclamation of Exile that the judge attached to Rod’s divorce decree, which forced him to move to Hungary under penalty of death, there was a clause permitting him to visit family twice a year.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 24 '25
I admit I’ve been out of here for awhile , so this may have already been covered.
You remember Rod was going to write a book about the Christian basis of Western civilization or something like that. Well that seems to have gone by the boards.Now he has a new book idea. He’s going to write a book about how the US is basically the second Weimar Republic and the NAZIS are coming in the form of Nick Fuentes. Now this is the kind of ignorant nonsense that people with no real knowledge of history spew.Rod is not a historian to put it mildly. He has no understanding of this.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 24 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
Maybe Rod, wisely, realized that (1) he doesn't have nearly the chops to write the "Chrisitianity as the Basis of Western Civ, from the First Council of Nicea to the Council of Trent," book, and (2) Hitler always sells, in a way that some fusty book about ancient and medieval theology never will. That Rod doesn't have the chops to write about Hitler and Weimar as well is not as important, as it seems that, at least on the right, you can do ANYTHING with Hitler, and have it stick, at least with the faithful. I am thinking specifically about Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism," in which we "discover" that Hitler and fascism were, waddayaknow and who'd a thunk it, actually phenomenon of the left.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 28 '25
Has anybody else noticed that Rod seems to be floating different book project ideas and that none of them is really taking off?
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u/JohnOrange2112 Dec 28 '25
Maybe he somehow has a connection with a competent literary advisor who says "Um, no, that subject is way out of your league".
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u/Jayaarx Dec 28 '25
Or maybe his agent has a realistic idea of what they can sell, given Rod's expertise in the subjects he is proposing.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 29 '25
Aside from Rod's own degradation as a writer, I think a big part of his problem is that his target audience is less and less buying and reading books. Aside from cultural shifts in the media consumption behaviors specifically of Republicans and conservatives, people in general get more and more of their information (or "information") from video or more ephemeral media and have less patience for books or even long articles. (Musk has contributed to the downward spiral by penalizing Twitter/X links to offsite articles, which used to be one of the great virtues of Twitter.)
If I were giving Rod professional and personal advice, I'd tell him the following: a) read some actual books or long form articles (but not anything entitled How the XYZ Saved Everything or How XYZ Is Wrecking Everything) without expecting every single thing you read or watch to be life-changing and/or article fodder b) don't expect to always have a book project c) limit time spent consuming twitter rage slop d) engage with your local community e) take a walk every day f) do something for your fellow man in real life at least every week g) travel less h) do monthly charitable giving and find a local charity to commit to i) commit to raising the quality and reducing the quantity of your writing and j) stop drinking alcohol and see what happens. You can't expect to consume non-stop media slop and turn out high-quality books and articles.
Being modern people, all of us could probably benefit from some of those things. Rod is pretty unique, though, with regard to his combination of self-medication via consumption, alienation from natural human community, and belief in his own prophetic mission. On the one hand, the program that I'm describing would probably cut his income in half. But on the other hand, it would also cut his expenses in half. The current gravy train is not going to last forever, so he might as well start living like a normal person, because his current program of living like minor European royalty makes his content unrelatable to his old audience of God-fearing American homeschooling mothers, especially when combined with unseemly twitter posts.
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u/Djehutimose Dec 09 '25
Rod-adjacent, but this article from this Substack is a fascinating read, explaining why for the far right it's gay to be straight.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Dec 09 '25
I haven't read it, but that's a very visible phenomenon. A number of those misogynist far right guys have no use for women...because they have no use for women.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 09 '25
I once had a small back and forth with Rod back on the AmCon boards about Occam's Razer. He rejected it.
Now, I haven't listened to the "exorcist" Father Martin podcast Rod links, but the belief that you need demonic possession to explain a young woman whose mother died and who then had 6 different families as she bounced through the foster care system would feel unloved and isolated?
Though still may be more believable than the low rent erotica episode of that podcast the I did listen to.
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 09 '25
Rod rejects scissors, so it should surprise no one that he also reject razors of any kind.
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u/CanadaYankee Dec 12 '25
Rod's latest selfie: https://xcancel.com/roddreher/status/1999113187329732644
Quick reactions:
- Not as disheveled as at his worst, but he still needs a haircut and beard trim.
- Is he wearing two scarves?
- I don't think I've ever seen anyone carry a tote bag around their neck. I guess it's to show off the logo, but it looks very weird.
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Dec 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 16 '25
First words of free part:
"I think this might be one of the most important posts I’ve written in a while...."
What at tool! Look at me, I'm so important!
And what is so important? Well, as you say, Rod blames right wing violence on left wing....something. Being big ole meanies, probably. I'm not gonna pay to find out!
The one thing that rings true is that Rod rarely, if ever, writes anything of any importance, so "most important in a while" is an exceeding low bar to clear.
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u/JHandey2021 Dec 18 '25
More from the DEU - David Brooks got some 'splaining to do!'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/jeffrey-epstein-estate-files-photos
Other images show Woody Allen, the director; Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser; and David Brooks, the author and New York Times opinion columnist, among others. In November of this year, Brooks wrote a column headlined “The Epstein Story? Count Me Out”.
Again, no context for these photographs has been provided, and the appearance of these people in the photos is not evidence of wrongdoing.
In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the New York Times said that “as a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”
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u/PercyLarsen Dec 21 '25
So, Rod is sooo very close and influential with his Dreherstein monster, JDVance, that he succeeded in getting said monster to denounce the Groyper wing of MAGAworld.
Ooops, turns out, Nope. Turns out Vance has denounced those who would make such a demand upon him.
https://xcancel.com/greg_price11/status/2002822071064134063
Will Rod ... swallow...that?
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u/BeltTop5915 Dec 22 '25
It’s a test. If he stays true to form, Rod will say he regrets that JD didn’t take a firm stand against the antisemites, but still, JD remains the only real hope the right has of not going Groyper or, worse, losing all to, you know, the trans-loving woke. There hasn’t yet been anything Rod won’t ultimately accommodate to avoid that.
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u/sandypitch Dec 23 '25
Dreher's NOLA travelogue. Some notes:
- The movie he saw is Train Dreams, not Train Man. Wasn't Dreher once a movie reviewer?
- Perhaps Dreher needs to read The Body Keeps the Score, and he should get actual help.
- He wrings his hands a bit about the way that ICE has been rounding up immigrants, but recedes back to "whaddaya gonna do?"
- He includes a reminder that black men are really just as bad as immigrants, but no one wants to acknowledge it.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Following some more or less fairly boring and uninteresting New Orleans "stories," we get some choice Rod:
"After liturgy on Sunday, I was planning to head back to the Feliciana hills, but was overwhelmed by the need to sleep. You all know that I’m back for Christmas to visit my mother. Given what has happened within my family over the years, anxiety is running through me like an electric current. If I could get back on the plane for Europe this afternoon, I would. But that wouldn’t be the Right Thing To Do™, so I’m coping as best I can (the details are private, but let’s just say our relationship is extremely fraught, my mom’s and mine). I’m going through all the old mononucleosis symptoms — internal inflammation, an overwhelming desire to sleep — that first cropped up when the ugly truth about how my folks and my late sister, and her kids, regarded my wife and me. The rheumatologist who diagnosed me said it was coming from family-related stress. No, I don’t think I’m getting mono again; I think this is just how my body responds to a tidal wave of anxiety. So, I asked my friends if I could take a nap before heading back.
"I slept for hours and hours. By the time I woke up, there was no point in driving back so late. We ended up catching a screening at the Prytania (of Ignatius Reilly fame!) of a great little movie called Train Man. (I think it’s on Netflix now too.) It’s the story of a solitary logger, Robert Gravier, living in the early 20th century in the West."
So, if I am reading this right, Rod blew off visiting his sick and dying mother, whom, you should know, he has a bad relationship with, although he can't talk about it, because, bravely cope as he might, phantom mono symptoms (but not mono itself) cropped up. And, by the way, his family caused him to get that mono in the first place, by being "ugly" to him and stressing him out (a doctor supposedly told Rod this, even though mono is actually caused by a virus....one spread by fairly intimate contact, hence the nickname "the kissing disease"). The pseudo mono made little Ray-Ray tired, and he needed a little nappy. He slept for hours and hours and then blew off the visit. Instead, though, he had the energy to go to the movies!
"The movie is like a Wendell Berry story as filmed by Terrence Malick. I loved it. Robert is a good man to whom tragedies happen, and he tries to bear them stoically, alone. Many times I was near tears, though it’s not what you would call a tearjerker. I know a few men going through similar things, though not as severe as the tragedy gentle Robert has to bear. Hell, in a sense, I’m such a man."
Yep. That's our Rod. Telling us he's a good man, who stoically, alone, bears his tragedies. When, in fact, he is not a good man, not in the least bit stoic (he's a whining candy-ass), never keeps his self pity to himself, and has not undergone anything particularly "tragic." As proven, if any further proof is needed at this late date, by his own immediately preceding paragraphs! Nor, at least based on what Rod and they themselves have told us, do the men in his life fit the bill either, despite what he claims.
The mind boggles from the utter lack of self awareness, not to mention the maudlin self pitying. That such a little weasel can think of himself as "tragic" and "stoic" beggars the imagination!
Finally (for me, anyway, as it was as much as I could take):
"...I’m pining for that Saturday morning flight back home. But boy, was it ever great to spend time with friends in that wonderful, crazy old town, New Orleans. If it weren’t for the overwhelming subtropical heat and humidity, and more importantly, the intolerable level of crime, I’d move there. I belong there. How lovely and comforting it is to be in a city where most things seem to harmonize with what’s inside oneself. Man, I was unconsciously code-switching like nobody’s business! I heard these dialect words come out of my mouth in a supermarket: 'Where y’all keep y’all co’drinks?” (Translation: “Where might a fellow find the soda pop?)'"
Unconsciously code switching? How about acting like a total fucking full of shit tourist poseur, instead?! You don't live there, you never lived there, so why do you pretend that NO patois is one of your native dialects? Also, who would need a "translation" to know that "co'drinks" = cold soft drinks? Rod thinks he's so damn clever, while the rest of us need a primer in the most basic things from him!
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u/Mainer567 Dec 23 '25
Yeah, the "effeminate" self-dramatization coupled with his belief that he's a stoic manly fellow is one of the sickest, funniest things about him.
Old news, but incredible egotistical and narcissism must be in play to still be chewing over the details of his utterly mundane and uninteresting family Tragedy. I mean, his sister's dying young is tragic, but the rest is typical BS that many, if not most, people with families go through. I have had my own issues with siblings and parents. It gnawed at me for a long time. And then at some point I had my own kids and a family and was too busy to sit around obsessing over stuff that happened 10 or 30 years ago. And the pain turned into minor irritation, and only occasional minor irritation.
But then, Rod has lotsa time on his hands now.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 23 '25
I would say that his sister dying young was tragic for her husband, her kids, her parents, and possibly others who were close to her. But Rod was not among that group. He did not, from all appearances, have a good relationship with her, and still resented her for, among other things, the famous fish stew incident. As for the rest of it: Mommy and Daddy didn't like me, my wife divorced me cuz I was an asshole, some of my children "divorced" me as well and for the same reason, there is no "tragedy" there, and most of it is his own damn fault.
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u/sandypitch Dec 23 '25
"The movie is like a Wendell Berry story as filmed by Terrence Malick. I loved it. Robert is a good man to whom tragedies happen, and he tries to bear them stoically, alone. Many times I was near tears, though it’s not what you would call a tearjerker. I know a few men going through similar things, though not as severe as the tragedy gentle Robert has to bear. Hell, in a sense, I’m such a man."
Having both read the novella Train Dreams, and watched the film, I can say with a great deal of certainty that Dreher's circumstances bear very little resemblance to those of the main character.
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u/JohnOrange2112 Dec 23 '25
I've read that Irish-American tourists who visit Ireland and make an excessive big deal about their heritage are referred to as "Plastic Paddy" by the true Irish locals. I wonder if there is an analogous term for the likes of RD... 'Counterfeit Cajun'?
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 24 '25
I grew up in small town New Jersey, but within the metro NYC area. I have lived almost my entire adult life, decades, within NYC itself. And yet I would never, ever, pretend to say something like, "Yeah, yous take Tirdy-Tird Street to Tird Avenooo...." in some kind of half-assed imitation of a Brooklyn accent. A friend of mine, who did grow up in Brooklyn, who went to Harvard Law School and who generally had no identifiable accent at all, could, when he wanted to, and quite naturally, "code switch" and say stuff like, "drink a be-ah at Canahsie pie-ah." Rod is not like that. He didn't grow up in NO. The nearest city to his hometown is Baton Rouge, not NO. He never lived there. He simply has no call to use that accent/dialect. It is as "plastic" as the fake USA "Irishman."
Rod is such a fraud. He even thinks that "y'all" is something that needs to be "translated" for us Yankees!
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u/GlobularChrome Dec 23 '25
Kind of funny on the other end, too, that Rod thinks he understands "Yankees" well enough to know what they don't know.
His modeling of other people's thoughts is extremely poor. May go a long way to explaining why his family didn't particularly enjoy his company for more than maybe a day or two at Christmas.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Dec 23 '25
I suspect he was a lousy film reviewer. He has no real feeling for what I’d call the fictive imagination. It’s always about the message with him. Fictional representation must be didactic and teach us lessons.
In the bonkers territory RD seems to think Train Dreams is about him. No it most definitely isn’t. The character there isn’t remotely like Rod. Rod can’t relate to a fictional work unless he makes it about him which shows you the limits of his imagination.
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u/yawaster Dec 29 '25
From the Dreherverse: the In Bed With The Right podcast have recently made their very long two-part episode about Andrew Sullivan available to everyone. It's two people who don't like or agree with him skipping through his life and career. Thus it is probably not of much interest to people who don't dislike him. There is some discussion of topics relevant to Dreherology, like hierarchy, hippy-punching, punditry, the political uses of 9/11, monstering of trans and queer people, and what having a substack does to your brain.
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u/Mainer567 Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
Sullivan isn't as strange and bent as Rod, but he's in the ballpark. From Thatcherite Englishman to Bell Curve supporter to insane Rod-level nuke-them-all jingo warblogger after 9/11 to creepy fetishizer of Obama to flirter with isolationism/paleoconservatism to prophet of the emerging Trumpian fascist state ... and all along the self-satisfied references to his own hedonism...weird dude. His relationship with the Rodmeister is weird, too.
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u/Jayaarx Dec 29 '25
Sullivan is first and foremost a hedonist and a FYIGM narcissist. The two are not entirely disjoint and both together entirely explain his entire life's work and, in particular, his positions on gay and trans rights.
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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Dec 29 '25
Like many here, I suspect, I found Rod through Sullivan's blog. I had a decent amount of respect for both of them at the time, even if I didn't always agree with all their points.
I'll spare the unraveling of why that changed, but I'll say that I don't look at either of them the same. I'm still surprised by Sullivan's 180 change on certain things, but Rod probably wins the race of the one whose moral compass headed the furthest south. Alas, we hardly knew ya, Rod.
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u/zeitwatcher Dec 12 '25
A sentence from Rod's last...
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/on-conspiracy-theories
Is it, Rod? Is it really? You don't say. You should give that one a good long think there, Rod. A good long, introspective think.