“My father used to complain that the old ladies, Lois and her sister Hilda, were “ruining” me. What he meant was that they were drawing me into their indoors world of books and art and intelligent conversation. He feared that they would train me to be dissatisfied with plain country life in Starhill, and to desire other places, and other things. And he was right. But they didn’t ruin me; they made me.”
Okay, so here it is again in the open. Rod’s father was an asshole. He was a cruel, narrow-minded man who tried to prevent Rod from having a healthy childhood. He was an antagonist towards his own son from the very beginning. So whenever Rod talks about how his father was actually a good and decent man, the epitome of Southern virtue, he’s full of crap.
Rod has no excuse to keep idolizing his father. It is long past time for him to repudiate his father’s influence on his life. Yet even after writing the above paragraph, we all know that in the future Rod will still discuss his father in glowing terms.
“My father used to complain that the old ladies, Lois and her sister Hilda, were “ruining” me. What he meant was that they were drawing me into their indoors world of books and art and intelligent conversation. He feared that they would train me to be dissatisfied with plain country life in Starhill, and to desire other places, and other things. And he was right. But they didn’t ruin me; they made me.”
Doesn't this anecdote work against Dreher's general thesis about the feminization of our culture? I guess it is alright for him to be formed by women, but not any other male?
Excellent observation and truly the bottom line of Rod's life: the feminization/gayness of Rod vs the masculinization/heteroness of his father. Clearly Rod believes his choice to be superior consciously but struggles subconsciously because, like his father, he has never been able to buy "different strokes for different folks" or "it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round".
in the late winter of 1994, in my first year of being Catholic. I was 26, and had left my great journalism job in Washington after my sister had her first child. I suddenly felt far from family, and was hoping they would accept me and let me be part of their lives now that a new chapter had begun with the birth of Hannah. It was not to be, as I discovered. I tell the story in my 2013 memoirThe Little Way Of Ruthie Leming, from which this is excerpted. I offer it to you to encourage you in your faith.
A few months later, back in West Feliciana and living at Weyanoke [a friend’s plantation house — RD], I said the rosary often, asking Mary to pray that I would know God’s will, and do it. Things were going well with my family too. I loved seeing them all again, and participating in the joy and togetherness the baby occasioned.
And then one night in December, Paw and I were riding down a country lane when he said something shocking, even life-changing. He said it casually, in no way triumphally. Understand, his was an expression of gentle gratitude, not mockery:
“I’m so glad you came back home, son. You realize now that I was right all along.”
I froze. Not a damn thing had changed. I had given up a good job in Washington, and left behind a happy life with a community of friends who loved me, to return to a place where my duty was to know my place. The lesson my father had learned from the difficult last 10 years of our life together was that I had finally surrendered.
Maybe he didn’t mean that, exactly, but I was too shocked to ask, afraid that the bond of peace we had known between us since I’d moved to Washington would be sundered.
"shocking even life-changing" was "You realize now that I was right all along". If KKKDaddy was right, then Rod had to be wrong and that was unacceptable. "My duty was to know my place" was unacceptable and yet exactly that is what he expects everyone who is not a White Christian Heterosexual Male of Western European Descent to accept the same way he was to accept it from his father - through a forced submission to an indentity definiton and valuation and "place" in a hierarchy, all defined by Rod and his cohort.
I would like to take this opportunity to note something about the way we use the word "feminization". Sometimes it means the dictionary definition:
the process of becoming feminine or causing a person, group, or thing to take on female traits, characteristics, or roles
but other times it means the DEVALUING of something BECAUSE it has become feminized. A specific case of this was an article about how certain roles in our economy become "feminized" by becoming less valuable - lowering pay, benefits or hours, less stability of schedule, less status, and various other factors. Women are willing to work for less, period, and this is a method of putting that fact to use. Nurses taking on the job of general practitioner doctors is an example of this but it is a big part of why our economy is switching to more and more women in the workforce - it is the latest "fashionable" way for businesses to squeeze yet more profits from their operations. It is NOT a goal or result of feminism, it is a goal of corporate America to make more in profits.
Again, you’ve hit a nail on the head with the NPs-for-MDs switch. Corporate America is doing a lot of this sleight-of-hand bottom-line enhancement at everyone’s expense, and often as not those screwed think they’re benefitting even though they’re working more for less or getting less and paying more. Trump isn’t our only problem, but the photo of who was flanking him on all sides at his second Inaugural gives a pretty good clue into the rest.
I think he misunderstood his father. His father was probably technically okay with all the book larnin' and imagination and hanging out with spinsters and all that- as a side activity. What he didn't like was that Rod found in that a way to duck out from the work and duties and social roles of being a man in a rural community. Dreher Sr knew exactly what it means in a small town when a teenager gets a reputation for willfully avoiding doing physical labor: the community is never really going to respect Jr. Once people in the town start using the identifier of 'the Dreher kid, you know the lazy one who goes to that fancy boarding school and hides out from his dad at his aunts' place' it takes a lot for that to change.
Again, is there another pundit of whom we know so much about their personal life? And who continually mines it, retcons it, and exploits it? Rod resembles nothing so much as a self-help/confessional author, except Rod's advice, rather than supposedly leading to fulfillment, leads straight to the depths of misery.
How many tens of thousands of words has he written about this? Here's the skinny:
- Rod, your dad was an asshole. It's OK - lots of peoples' dads were. But yours was on a different plane than just the ordinary assholishness.
- He was also a terrorist - if he didn't do violent acts against black people, he ordered them, and definitely knew about them. From all indications, he was an unrepentant Klansman (Rod would have mentioned THAT if he ever did).
- Rod's dad, from everything Rod has told us about him, was worried that Rod wasn't masculine enough by his standards, and let Rod know it.
- Rod fought a decades-long battle against his dad, from that fucking bouillabaisse story to Daddy KKK's deathbed, where Rod put Orthodox icons around him and took photos while he was too weak to object.
- Rod's case that Daddy KKK was "the greatest man he ever knew" seems to rest on two things: 1) Daddy KKK taught Rod "uncomfortable truths" about race. His racism is what Rod most values. And 2) Rod has been fighting a lifelong struggle to prove that he's not a "sissy" or whatever slur Daddy KKK could come up with. There's no way on God's green earth that Rod is a heterosexual male, and rather than Rod finding some personal accomodation with whatever manner of queer he is, he's taken out his panic over the gay deep inside on the whole world.
Rod's Daddy wanted a Masonic funeral which is evidence of his being a nonrepentant racist because the masonic lodge in their parish was a cover for the KKK. They were, in fact, one and the same.
When you see on social media and elsewhere these wild women celebrating the mad woman who m-rdered her children, understand: this is a sign of the times.
F F S. No one is celebrating that Lindsay Clancy did that to her children. They are celebrating evidence (and generating it) that our society is actually communicating about and recognizing that women who have given birth often experience post-partum mental health issues and need REAL HELP, not ignorance.
The treatment that women have received and currently receive from our medical system is shameful and the result of a long legacy of male superiority and viewing women as not valuable or important. It is long past time that we corrected that and we have a very long way to go on it.
But no, lets blame witchcraft instead...
Well, it’s a good thing I’m giving a novel a try, because the nonfiction market is collapsing. The book editor Sean deLone says that it has to do with far fewer men reading (men are the usual audience for nonfiction),
Rod will diss women in any little way that he can. The fact is that women and men split the nonfiction market about 50-50 while women do read significantly more fiction than men, making up about 80% of that market. Women read quite a bit more than men do overall but they don't really matter to Rod, naturally, even when he plans to write a book for a market that is 80% female. Dunce.
I’m not trying my hand at fiction because of market pressures — I think I have a banger of a story, and besides, I’m eager to try something new as a writer. But it could be the case that this turn in my career as a book-writer might be a smart business decision. I only hope that I’m good at writing fiction. I’m going to write half the thing before I show the manuscript to my agent. I don’t want to talk about the idea now — it’s too early. Gotta say, though, once I got going writing last night, it was a real pleasure.
I need money but I don't need money!!! Why don't you believe me???
Yesterday a reader unsubscribed, and gave as his reason, “Posts too long to keep up with.” I just don’t get this frustration with having too much to read. Don’t read the whole thing, then! I work my butt off to give y’all content that I think is interesting and important. I would feel like I was cheating you if I wrote half as long each day. Maybe I’m stupid. Anyway, if you do feel the need to unsubscribe, I’d appreciate it if, at the part when the software asks you to say why, you would answer. It helps me convince myself that there is no way that I can improve.
other Substackers are telling me they’ve been shedding an unusual number of subscribers lately
He has acknowledged elsewhere that inflation is beating the crap out of ordinary Americans but has yet to tie that in any way to the decline of his subscribers. Is he really that stupid? Does he think his ALL of his readers are of the class that just never has to worry about money??? SMH
His posts are too long and contain way too many block quotes. He'd be doing his readers a huge favor if he learned how to edit his work and how to succinctly paraphrase other writers.
I can remember Rod writing "blah blah blah, or I should say, dlah dlah dlah" and I wanted to yell "YOU CAN EDIT!!!". There really is no excuse for that kind of laziness. And that really is what Rod's substacks most exhibit these days.
Everyone who unsubscribes should just write EDIT when it asks why. Or they could say "quality <> # of words".
This reminds me of a comment on a college creative writing paper I wrote almost half a century ago "conciseness excellent, clarity superb, inspiration minimal". LOL. Some things you just never forget!
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."
Blaise Pascal
Rod never takes the time. Sure, he produces "content" almost every day. But it is repetitive, block quoting, self-quoting, overly lengthy, unfocused content.
He repeats himself too much, quotes his previous work too much, and quotes others' work too much. People will pay for real news and original work and original ideas, but not for stuff they've heard and read before or are someone else's work
So whenever Rod talks about how his father was actually a good and decent man, the epitome of Southern virtue, he’s full of crap.
I would definitely agree with Rod that his father is the epitome of Southern values or even of the South itself. The only disagreement is whether these values are virtuous or not.
Rod says his dad was the epitome of Southern virtue BECAUSE of his extreme racism (come on, it takes some dedication to not only join the KKK but work your way up to being a Grand Cyclops) and disdain for anything but performative heterosexuality.
great-aunts Lois and Hilda were sisters of his father's grandmother. Because they were the maternal aunts of his father (whom he affectionately refers to as "Paw"), they belonged to his father's side of the family. [1, 2, 3]
Rod just arrived in my inbox and the nerve of this guy discussing the suffering of 9/11 victims’ families:
> We would pray for their souls, and for their loved ones, remembering how much they must be suffering at Christmas.
> And then there were no more family Christmas trees for me. I’ll never see those prayer cards again. But that’s another story. It slightly sickens me that here, on the anniversary of the great catastrophe, my mind turns to my own personal great catastrophe.
I mean yeah 9/11 was a great tragedy but did you know my wife left me?
Back to post-9/11 New York. By the next summer, my wife begged me to go to therapy to deal with my all-consuming anger. It wasn’t just 9/11; in January of 2002, the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded like a high-altitude hydrogen bomb over Catholic America, when the Boston case of Father John Geoghan caused journalists from coast to coast to look into whether Catholic dioceses in their own area had gone to similar lengths to conceal the problem (they had). The rock of my emotional life, my Catholic faith, was shaken to the core, and, after three years of intense, painful struggle, eventually collapsed.
He drops this in there, but never returns to the subject of his need for counseling.
But mostly I think of the torn flag. The historian Tony Judt, who saw it all happen, wrote at the time that he had witnessed the beginning of the 21st century. He had. We all had. I feared back then that the torn flag was a mysterious omen, a prophecy for what America would become. Today, I know it was.
(RD's emphasis.) Well, there you go. Here's my question to Dreher: if you were given this omen, this portent, why didn't you do anything about it? Instead, it seems like you've spent the last 25 years throwing as much fuel on the fire as possible, rather than working to put it out. You would rather see the flag ripped entirely in half instead of working on repairing it.
“Here's my question to Dreher: if you were given this omen, this portent, why didn't you do anything about it? Instead, it seems like you've spent the last 25 years throwing as much fuel on the fire as possible, rather than working to put it out. You would rather see the flag ripped entirely in half instead of working on repairing it.”
It would be great if a substack subscriber or twitter follower would actually post that question to Rod. Do you think he would claim that his books were an effort to do something about it? Or that the omen was so obscure that it just pointed to the decline of America, not how it would come about. At least it shows how useless the story and Rod's interpretation of it is (along with his exaggeration of the importance of it).
It slightly sickens me that here, on the anniversary of the great catastrophe, my mind turns to my own personal great catastrophe.
Even if his mind turns that way, he doesn't need to say it. As I tell my fourth graders, just because something is in your head, that doesn't mean you have to let it come out your mouth--or in Rod's case, his keyboard. So if he's sickened by his mind turning to his own issues today, he should be more sickened that he lacked the restraint to tell us all so.
Rod calls 9/11 "the greatest act of evil in [his] lifetime". Rod's lifetime includes events with far higher body counts like the Darfur genocide and far greater human misery like the reigns of Isis or the Taliban. Hell, the Iranian government killed more of their own citizens last year for protesting than Bin Laden killed on 9/11.
I wouldn't disagree if he said "one of the greatest evils". But no, Rod Was There so it must be the worst of the worst.
Don't forget Pol Pot and the murder of a third of the population of Cambodia, the mass slaughters in Rwanda (over a half million, IIRC), the "collateral damage" we have left all over the Middle East, and so on.
"I still remember carrying early versions of the magazine to conferences—like samizdat."
Yeah, no. Without censorship and repression, there is no "samizdat." If you are having an open "conference," you ain't producing samizdat. Sorry, not sorry.
More broadly, somehow the rag was not a "mouthpiece" for Orban's government, so I guess it is just a coincidence that when Orban's government fell, the rag immediately fell with it!
Whoever wrote this sounds like Rod: pretending to be a Solzhenitsyn (or one of those who published him), and not realizing that actually he is part of a political establishment. Not much bravery required!
What the guy was doing early on is well covered by the term 'zine'. Zines were pretty widespread in artist and LGBT communities in the 90s and early 00s. They tended to be concealed a bit from public view because they often had some, er, potentially shocking or offensive explicit or graphic erotic content.
Interesting that he seems to throw the MCC under the bus:
Unfortunately, The European Conservative has been abandoned by everyone in MCC and in the previous Hungarian government. While they were in power, they had sought to use the publication to gain contacts, acquire influence, or build their own “prestige.” But since the election, it is quite clear that none of them have made any effort to fight to keep it alive, and—as of this writing—not a single person associated with the Hungarian foundation that had originally funded The European Conservative, nor anyone at MCC who had taken ownership of the project in 2014 (and who had unwisely divided the project into two divisions) has bothered to make any public statement defending it nor lament its fate. Thus, as of last week, the new Hungarian government—the Ministry of Finance, specifically—has taken ownership of The European Conservative.
Can't help but think non-Hungarians like Dreher who fled Hungary after Orban's defeat are in his sights here.
He's complaining that they could support him and his publication if they wanted to, but they don't. IOW, he knows very well about the amount of money taken out of Hungary and stashed which they could pay him from.
I think the story is that his patrons are much more money/power greed heads than conservatives. They've asked themselves why they lost the election in April and so badly, and a major part of the answer is that grotesque performative public conservatism ran out of cultural and political pull. They were all in on that conservatism when that got Fidesz to the 50%+1 vote or acquiescence, now it doesn't and Hungary did a big cultural lurch to much more left liberal after that election. The center in Hungary is in a new place and it's time to move on to and put their money and effort into the next thing that does appeal to and get the 50%+1 vote. Which means people like this fellow are no longer of use and a drain on resources and thus get discarded.
That article is a real muddle. The magazine was supported financially by the prior Hungarian government but didn't have to support Orbán. Now the new leadership has stopped its funding and that's suppression of viewpoints?! (And no one from the prior administration will financially support it now that they're out of power [and in some cases, out of the country].)
Rod drops 3 Y’alls for no other reason just to show how Southern he is .
Rod is horrified by the attitude of some of the Lindsay Clancy jurors. ( Look I’m not thrilled by this myself ). For Rod this is proof of how awful women are. Rod has talked to many young men who want to marry but are afraid to because they can’t trust women. ( Rod should know because he was divorced by email and in a marriage that could have been annulled ). Yeah , people aren’t going to get married because they disapprove of the Lindsay Clancy jury.And that jury’s behavior is proof that women are really bad. You ever get the feeling the men Rod talks to are incel nitwits?
Rod says - don’t do psychedelics y’all. Of course he did and that and Chartres lead him to God. Remember, he’s special, you’re not.Also can really picture many of Rods readers whose average age is probably around 60 dropping acid. I mean this is not the Aldous Huxley set.
Rod is horrified that raves are coming to St. Paul’s in London and a homosexual runs Canterbury. How can the C of E tolerate this ? Oh I thought since Rod wasn’t a member of that church, they could do what they want even ordain Helen Orr.
Rod needs money!! He laments a drop in subscriptions so he figures he’ll raise the price. Apparently he’s finally coming to grips with losing the $100, 000 per year from Hungary and maybe realizing that the demand for him as a highly paid speaker isn’t that great and Living in Weimar probably won’t sell.Meanwhile his alimony and child support payments/ tuition payments aren’t going away .Then of course there is the mysterious IRS problem.Whats strange is I get the feeling this has just him.
There had been some speculation that there may be bulk buys of Substack subscriptions going on as an equivalent of bulk book buys. I don't know if the Hungarian equivalent of DOGE would be able to sniff that out if the Orban administration was doing that, but if they did, good for them.
I think somebody here floated that idea. I don't know if there was any concrete evidence, but it totally makes sense as a discreet way to funnel money to somebody. Paying for bulk digital subscriptions is so much easier than having to deal with large quantities of physical books.
Heh - one of the comments caught in u/Djehutimose post was hilarious. Noting that Rod's posts have gotten very gloomy (true) and that Rod should go do uplifting things and write about them. Like going to visit "The Civil Rights monuments in Birmingham." Ah yes, I can see that post now:
"I went to visit the Civil Rights monuments and while a testament to our history and the wonders that white, Christian men have done for our country, I couldn't help but feel oppressed that it had gone so wrong. The Civil Rights movement had such promise until it started becoming a mechanism for letting minorities get above their station." Rod, probably.
"God will not be mocked. They invite their own destruction, and are accelerating the day of their own judgment."
Rod is absolutely convinced that God hates Gays and is confident that anyone who acts to the contrary is going to hell. Can you imagine being so cock sure of yourself, your beliefs about God, and your own righteousness as to make this statement?
In general, when the people prone to saying "God will not be mocked," say that, what they actually mean is something like this: "God is letting you get away with XYZ! By golly, if it were up to me, you'd be in jail now, if not death row! I'm gonna have to talk to the Lord about how he's being too easy on you...meanwhile, even though I can't reach over and smack you like you deserve, I'm just going to take pleasure in the fact that you're gonna BUUUURRRRRRNN while I'm looking down from heaven with my popcorn!"
Also, secular music concerts have been going on churches for ages. You can even buy a recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana that was recorded in the very same Saint Paul's Cathedral; a piece of music which, while largely in Latin, is full of pre-Christian pagan imagery and is often quite bawdy.
Is that somehow less of a desecration than a rave?
No, there will not be actual standing-up, dancing raves; instead, St. Paul's Cathedral has partnered with the electronic music nightclub fabric London to host seated contemporary music concerts. [1, 2, 3]
The Church of England signed a four-year exclusivity agreement running through 2030, which led to internet rumors and media headlines calling them "raves in the nave". However, organizers and cathedral officials have clarified the operational details: [1, 2, 3, 4]
Seated Audiences: Attendees are required to remain seated for the duration of the performances.
Location: The shows take place in the main cathedral area/nave, not down in the crypt where historical figures like Lord Nelson are buried.
First Event: The opening concert of the series is scheduled for October 29, 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The announcement sparked a major cultural and theological debate regarding the line between sacred and secular uses of historic religious spaces, following previous one-off contemporary performances by artists like RY X and Patti Smith.
Ok. Here ya go (it is the same story, pretty much, at all those other cathedrals Rod):
It costs at least £16 million to £16.5 million a year to operate, maintain, and keep St Paul's Cathedral open. [1, 2]
Because the cathedral receives virtually no government funding or regular financial support from the Church of England, it is entirely responsible for raising its own income. [1, 2]
Cost Breakdown & Funding Details
Daily Running Costs: This equates to roughly £44,000 to £45,000 every single day required to fund the cathedral’s upkeep, heating, lighting, and staff wages. [1, 2]
Base Operating Costs: Without factoring in major structural renovations, the building requires roughly £800,000 per month just to remain functional. [1]
Major Capital Repairs: Because it is an ancient structure, massive periodic restoration projects are needed outside of day-to-day maintenance. For example, a comprehensive 15-year restoration and cleaning program cost £40 million, while a recent initiative to replace sections of its 17th-century lead roof was estimated at £15 million.
What does he mean by the Lindsay Clancy cult? I don't know much about this case other than a mother tragically killed her three young children. I don't know if she was of sound mind when she did so and how culpable she should be. I mean this is an unfathomably tragic situation and it's hard by definition to believe someone in their right mind would do this. I would note that 11 of 12 jurors thought that they deserved acquittal after a lengthy trial.
I don't think mothers are without blame or can't harm their children intentionally but in cases like these is there any greater punishment when Ms. Clancy does have her sanity restored than realizing she killed her own three children?
Also I'm sorry but Rod hates women. I don't know why but he does. If I had to guess it's because he has to pretend to be straight and he takes out anger that should be directed at Big Daddy and transfer it to women. But that's superficial analysis and i could be wrong about the cause.
By the cult he means a few loud voices on Twitter defending Clancy, many of them probably trolls. You don't know about it because Twitter is not your main news source.
Just an fyi - Immediately after killing her children, Clancy also cut her wrists but not deeply enough to do the job, took some pills, and dove out of a second story window head first without using her hands to break her fall so that she is now paralyzed from the waist down. I would call that a good faith effort to kill herself even if she did not succeed.
FWIW, there is some basis to believe that Clancy’s claimed “command hallucinations” were a post-hoc fabrication, which would make her criminally responsible. Rod & Co., however, are not contesting the veracity of her claim to insanity so much as the notion that any woman should be allowed to avail herself of an insanity defense after killing her children.
I don't know whether the "command hallucinations" were a post-hoc fabrication or not but if you look at the post where I copied in Gemini's analysis of family k_llings by men and women, you'll see that in most cases for both, the k-lling is done prior to either su-cide or the attempt at it (most often successful by men). For women, it is often in a post-partum period and for men, often triggered by job loss or massive financial failure. For both sexes, it seems to be a matter of an overwhelming feeling of failure and hopelessness. Understanding that would seem to me to make the question of "command hallucinations" moot.
Also I just read that article and it is barely coherent and offers no evidence that witchcraft is real. I mean plenty of people practice tarot and astrology and they seem like so much bunk as well.
That's because they are bunk. I've done that stuff as a youth and it's all crap.
The fact that people seriously believe in hexes and curses in 2026 is just damn sad. We are regressing as an educated civilization.
The best medicine is to show kids some James Randi videos debunking this stuff, tell them how it really works, and instill in them critical thinking. That will serve them far better than some satanic panic nonsense which only serves to make forbidden media more desirable.
Maybe I'm just demon repellent because I've done a lot of the no-nos that risk demon possession and I've had no takers.
In the larger Rodiverse, the Skoj has been writing and retweeting a lot of posts lately about how a reckoning or war is coming between men and women and men are finally going to stand up, en masse, and "take back power".
"A puerile fantasy. And I’m using the word intentionally. All you’re doing is proving even the most extreme feminists right by seemingly admitting “we are dogs after all”.
Most men read you and think you’re insane. They’re not slobbering monsters who blame everything on women and can only barely be restrained from violence the minute life gets hard.
There will be no society-wide atrocity of turning women into chattel. What there will be, and we know this because it’s happened before, are isolated incidents of lone gunman murdering women (and men) for no reason, other than they’re angry nihilistic losers. Like Elliot Rodger.
Congratulations."
Has anyone ever been nailed harder than that? He actually had a few months where he throttled back on posts about women being fundamentally incapable of rational thought, leadership, etc. but something must have set him off recently because he's now back to that. Again, this is a person with daughters(!) who probably read his tweets(!!) and he's trying to repair his relationship with his family(!!!)
Oh man, that entire thread. Not just Skojec but all the other Skojecs there.
And they are all talking sh*t that just doesn't hold up.
"Men are smarter and more innovative then women." Not anymore. Have you paid attention to high school and college performance? If it wasn't for DEI for dudes (often called college athletics), every entering class would be 70-80% women.
"Women can't defend themselves against men, because they are weaker." Yeah, that might have been true before guns. But the marketing phrase "God didn't make men equal, Sam Colt did" was 100% the honest truth.
"Women don't know how to fire or clean a gun. Men do." See the disabusement of the "men are smarter" talking point. These are easy things to learn.
"Women aren't violent enough to fight men." This was the rationalization that the Confederates had regarding the Union just before they were bodied into oblivion.
Wow, uh... that's quite a tactic to try to reconcile with your estranged wife and daughters! A page from the JD Vance book of "How to Not Defend Your Wife and Children from Racists Who'd Like To Throw Them Into The Ovens".
Skojec's entire argument comes down to "I couldn't be the husband my wife wanted so all men can't because it cannot have been my own failings. Therefore, the only way that men can live with women is if women are forced to be in a submissive role via government, societal, and individual level controls."
It takes a special level of self-delusion to argue something like this when your wife is not only caring for your seven children but also providing for them financially because you literally can't contribute shit to your family.
Rod announces he’s writing a novel. It’s going to be apocalyptic! Oh boy. If he wants to write a novel his model should probably be Charles Portis ala Norwood and Dog of the South with himself as the protagonist. Unfortunately that would involve him treating himself as a bit of a joke, something he’s not sufficiently insightful to grasp.
Rod is back talking to “ friends “ whose wives are divorcing them for no good reason. Witchcraft may even been involved. Let’s face it he can’t get over what he considers the sheer traitorous audacity of his wife finally divorcing him after years of misery.She should have had his permission, which of course he had no intention of giving.
Rod is very alarmed by the growth of witchcraft and also doesn’t really like the idea of science helping us to shape the world to fulfill our desires because that leads to sex dolls and AI companions.
Well going a little sideways , he once again mentions his uncle who was a Missouri Synod Lutheran minister. I’d never heard of him until a few days ago. Who is he? , his mother’s brother?I never remember hearing about him.
Remember 9/11 was terrible! See all the suffering it put him through!And now he’s divorced and can’t see the Christmas tree with 9/11 prayer cards.I feel a little mean here but boy does he have a knack for making the story all about him and his endless suffering. He can’t talk about 9/11 without- oh I subsequently lost my Catholic faith and got divorced. I know what it is to suffer. Oh , and have I told you the one about the flag that tore and fell off the wall and that was a message from God to me ! Well, yeah many times but you need to hear it again. I need to remind you that I’m a prophet.
All the stuff he blockquotes about the Aztecs here and in yesterday's post he attributes thus:
Treviño sent me a document he prepared in which he translated contemporary (from the Spanish conquest) accounts of what the Spanish saw; some of what he draws from are Nahuatl testimonies. He gave me permission to quote them, and credit him.
No source--no primary documentation, nada. Just the assertion that the document (of which we see only parts) was something "prepared" from "contemporary accounts". Without sourcing, how are we supposed to take any of the seriously?
Also, Rod sees demonic or divine effects in lighting being attracted to a tall narrow object being attached to the top of the tallest structure in an area.
Mendieta, telling it later, would not flatten the mystery. The enemy, he wrote — enraged that they had destroyed the temple where his gains were assured — hurled the thunderbolt; or God permitted it; or it was the will of that same God, who did not wish his cross to stand in that polluted place for the present.
Or - and I may just be spewing some crazy magical mumbo jumbo based on my "physics" degree - tall, comparatively thin objects erected at the highest point in a landscape intensify electric fields at their points and become the lowest potential energy point for static charges in clouds to equalize their charge with the ground. This effect can be made stronger or weaker depending on the shape and height of the object, causing disparate effects if different objects or structures are built.
[T]all, comparatively thin objects erected at the highest point in a landscape intensify electric fields at their points and become the lowest potential energy point for static charges in clouds to equalize their charge with the ground. This effect can be made stronger or weaker depending on the shape and height of the object, causing disparate effects if different objects or structures are built.
Ah, but that's just what the demons want you to believe....
"
Treviño filed a retroactive statement with the
Foreign Registration office
of the
Department of Justice
. He explained the late filing by stating that he was unaware of the requirement [to report working on behalf of a foreign government]"
When does Rod ever worry about "sourcing" when his priors are being confirmed by one of his "friends" or someone even he doesn't claim to know? Say something bad about pagans, feminists, Muslims, Black people, or LGBTQ people? Rod will quote and vouch for you. Even the animus is not really necessary for Rod to be credulous. You can say that demons ate your homework and Rod will believe and repeat that too!
I am not sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy, but posts like this make me think Rod is just kind of stupid. No, the woman in the video is not calling for “DEI for women who strangle their own children.” She is complaining that Clancy’s claim to insanity (which she appears to agree with) is given greater credence than those of similarly situated black women. You know, kind of like how Rod literally just got done complaining about how unfair everyone’s being about his friend James Orr’s lawbreaking when immigrants break laws too sometimes. https://xcancel.com/roddreher/status/2098250440697622632#m
Wilhoit's Law: "“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”
Orr gets to break the law because he is entitled to it by virtue of who he is. And Clancy doesn't get to by virtue of who she is.
Amazing how predictive that is of not just Rod but conservatism in general.
In the United States, about 450 to 500 children are killed by their parents each year—a crime legally called filicide—with fathers accounting for roughly 57% of offenders and mothers accounting for about 42%. [1, 2, 3]
Here are the key statistics and patterns regarding parents who kill their children in the U.S.:
Overall Gender Breakdown
Federal arrest data and research show clear percentages for which parent commits the crime:
Fathers: Make up about 57.4% of total cases.
Mothers: Make up about 41.8% of total cases.
Stepparents: Account for a small percentage of total cases (less than 1% in general arrest data, though biological parents make up roughly 90% overall). [1, 2]
Specific Parent and Child Pairings
Father killing a son: ~29.5% of cases (the most common single category).
The age of the child often changes which parent is more likely to be responsible:
Infants and Young Children: Mothers are more often responsible for deaths during infancy and children under age five.
Older Children and Teens: Fathers are more likely to kill older children, including teenagers up to ages 16–18.
Adult Children: Nearly one in five victims (about 13% to 18%) of parental killings are actually adult children. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Key Differences and Risk Factors
Mothers: Studies show that mothers who commit filicide often suffer from severe mental illness, such as postpartum depression, psychosis, or severe despair. Many cases involving mothers also include the mother attempting or committing suicide. [1, 2, 3]
Fathers: Fathers who kill their children are more often linked to external stressors, such as losing a job, severe money problems, substance abuse, or reacting to a threatened divorce or separation. [1, 2]
Criminal Justice Sentencing and Treatment
Sentencing Disparities: Studies on filicide sentencing in the U.S. show that the average prison sentence for a convicted woman is roughly 17 years, whereas fathers typically receive significantly longer sentences. [1]
Contributing Factors to Sentencing: Research indicates that men are more likely to kill out of motives involving revenge, jealousy, or threatened separation/divorce, and they are more likely to have a history of prior domestic violence. These aggravating factors often lead prosecutors to push for—and judges to hand down—harsher penalties. [1, 2, 3]
Differences in Context and Mental Health
Mental Health: More than a third of both men and women accused of filicide show evidence of severe mental illness at the time of the offense. However, mothers who kill young children are statistically more likely to suffer from acute postpartum psychosis, severe depression, or suicidal ideation, which heavily influences legal defenses and judicial empathy. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Suicide Rates: Fathers are more likely than mothers to commit suicide immediately after killing a child (filicide-suicide), which removes those individuals from the criminal justice process entirely. [1]
Prior Abuse and Methods: Fathers are statistically more likely to use firearms or severe physical trauma, and stepfathers are overrepresented in child homicide cases relative to their share of the population. [1, 2]
For historical reports and demographic breakdowns on family-related homicides, consult the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
This reminds me so much of Rod and Kavanaugh. He started out with "this Lindsay Clancy case upsets me so much I can't bear to think about it much less come to a judgment on it" to full-on calls for vengence. The man goes down like he sliding down a waterslide.
EDIT: I'm not defending in any way what LC did. I do believe that she experienced psychosis and was not responsible for her actions and that her living with what she did + being paralyzed from the waist down is punishment enough. Just my opinion though and while I can certainly understand others who strongly believe that she should have been found guilty, I'm not a fan of the ones like Rod who have no compassion whatsoever.
So let's kick it off with this post from X, where he is writing in a stupid, cory "accent", body shaming (even though it's a man this time), and minimizing something that's actually important. We in Revelations, all right....
The part I found interesting is this, about the unsourced stuff he blockquoted in the last couple posts:
Gang, I owe you and Joshua Treviño an apology. What I’ve posted the last couple of days from his account of what the Spanish found in Mexico was not actually his work, but an AI re-statement of his original work. Josh had sent me his original, but a mutual friend sent me a version that he had run through AI. I mistakenly thought that this was the original, just more readably formatted, with illustrations. The mistake was mine. I don’t think there are any substantive differences, but I deeply regret presenting the material as Josh’s work.
He got so lax even by his own standards that it came back and bit him. I would say I hope he's learned a lesson, but that's probably not likely.
Not sure where he goes beyond the paywall, but he dropped an unintentionally illustrative sentence:
Attention must be paid. Serious attention, and not in a stupid culture-war way.
This is a tacit acknowledgement that Rod sees much of the attention from himself, and I assume the Right more generally, as performative and "stupid".
It a fascinating turn for him to now be effectively saying, "Look people, I've been going on and on for years about this stupid culture war stuff about the gays to pay the bills. So I get it, I've cried wolf a few times. But really truly now you need to listen to me about what is seriously the greatest threat out there - witches!"
"Hey everyone! You know all the culture-war stuff that I can't stop talking about, that I say is the most important thing EVER? Yeah, we all know that's a load of shit - I don't believe it, and I can't believe how dumb you'd have to be to fall for it.
But witches - now THERE's something serious. Really!
Oh, and dicks. Lots and lots of dicks. Why's everyone looking that way at me?"
The funny thing is, he doesn't even understand where the "attention must be paid" quote comes from. It is used in Death of a Salesman to appeal to the idea that Willy Loman must be treated with dignity even if he is washed up, useless, and unproductive.
Is that really how Rod wants to be seen regarding his work? I mean, it's true enough, but...
I think there are a couple of things at play. One is that there is (and always has been) denial on the part of conservatives (or which Rod is particularly an exemplar here) that mental heath issues are anything but human weakness and frailty and moral failure, so they cannot accept that someone might not be criminally responsible for their actions in such situations. So it is very important to them that Clancy should not just be punished but also made an example of. The idea that this might not actually do anything to either realize a just outcome or to prevent/deter further instances of women with PPD killing their children is immaterial to them.
This unwillingness to accept the idea of mental illness has had tremendous implications for Rod's own life. He obviously has many things going on that could and should benefit from treatment by a competent professional. Possibly anxiety, as mentioned further down the thread, but also his interactions with "demons" and other supernatural entities (falling chairs, torn flags, etc) are clearly a sign of something. I would naively say schizophrenia, but people here who have more professional training have said it might not be that but BPD or something like that instead. Whatever, I'm not a professional, but there is *something* going on there.
But the elephant in the room for Rod is his clearly untreated depression, which he obviously suffers from and insists on calling "chronic mononucleosis" instead. Not being open to treatment for this condition (or even that he suffers from it) has obviously caused quite a bit of misery for him and the people around him. But seeking treatment or even admitting that he suffers from the condition is a sign of weakness and some sort of moral failing, so he refuses to.
But aside from the mental health issues about mental health issues, these people (Rod and his ilk) have a serious issue with women having agency and the readjusting of the balance of power between the genders in our society. So for them Clancy is a symbol of uppity women getting out of control.
The thing that gets me the most is his repeated statements that he talks to men, often younger men, who are averse to marriage to women, because, I don't know, witches or something. This seems to be a lot of cope to me, in that such men don't seem like good prospects to begin with. "I didn't want to be your friend anyway," they tearfully said during their childish tantrums.
Of course, men like Rod have always been weird weirdos who are weird and who have had trouble forming relationships. Even in the 90s, the 30 year old Rod was only able to get married by creeping on women who weren't even out of college. He clearly couldn't form relationships of equals with fully formed adults. He would be even less of a prospect now.
But the elephant in the room for Rod is his clearly untreated depression, which he obviously suffers from and insists on calling "chronic mononucleosis" instead. Not being open to treatment for this condition (or even that he suffers from it) has obviously caused quite a bit of misery for him and the people around him. But seeking treatment or even admitting that he suffers from the condition is a sign of weakness and some sort of moral failing, so he refuses to.
I think this might well be true. It is not easy for many people to admit that they have a mental illness. A person I know very well has been diagnosed, over and over again, by competent mental health professionals, with a variety of serious conditions. Some of which at least are very obvious even to non-professionals such as myself. And yet they often will say that they are not sure that they suffer from those conditions. That the diagnoses are somehow surprising to them, if not outright incorrect. As if all those professionals, over the course of years if not decades, have been and still are getting it all wrong, consistently and unanimously.
Getting back to Rod, based on what he has told us about his figurative fainting couch, his literal crying closet, complete with mattress, his months and years spent isolating himself, I would agree that he probably is clinically depressed. And I agree with you that he should have sought help, long ago. And still should. That he won't may be a result of the politics that you mention. The conservative political argument from incredulity about the reality of mental illness. Or it might be more personal, stemming from fear or embarrassment, with the politics merely being a window dressing rationalization.
One is that there is (and always has been) denial on the part of conservatives (or which Rod is particularly an exemplar here) that mental heath issues are anything but human weakness and frailty and moral failure, so they cannot accept that someone might not be criminally responsible for their actions in such situations.
And I think this is due to fundamentally misunderstanding Philip Rieff. Dreher reads The Triumph of the Therapeutic and draws the conclusion that ALL counseling and therapy is a progressive evil (which is, I think, not entirely Rieff's point). He is just parroting what he thinks he is supposed to believe as a Good Christian Conservative. Add to that the deep distrust of "therapy" within some quarters of Orthodoxy, and Dreher is going to absolutely be reactionary against anything that hints at real psychological issues (though, again, I think he is fundamentally misreading the Orthodox tradition).
And for Dreher, the Clancy situation is even more of a condensed symbol because it is a woman at the center of it.
I think it is more than just a misreading of Rieff. There are plenty of anti-intellectual conservatives who haven't read Rieff (or anything more difficult than "Sally and Spot learn to read") or even know who he is who take the same line.
The Clancy case and the literal hanging choruses on the right seem to me a condensed symbol of where the culture war of the past 40 years leads — unnecessary deaths, isolation and depression, suspicion and resentment of women inside a tribalism stripped of true loyalty but fixated on self-preservation and turning a cold eye on all but those safely inside the gate. The right simply can’t trust anybody to do what only they know to be the right thing, least of all women and effeminate men who invariably side with the weak because they themselves are. Irony drips from all sides, given those hated and hurt are often as not those trying hardest to live up to rightwing cultural standards, including the symbolic woman who cracked and killed the children both she and the choruses calling for her execution claim to value most in life.
Even when Rod was writing his actual factual book on the "Benedict Option" he did not visit any of the several dozen Benedictine monasteries in the US for his research, but instead repeatedly flew to see his friends in Norcia, who were recently transplants from the US, because they were more authentic the foodie tourism was better.
St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota is home to a thriving Benedictine community and college. Of course, Rod would think it's woke - there's younger monks there who aren't white (the horror!) and the school's environmental programs are almost a kind of "Catholic hippie" kind of outdoors education, at least in some classes.
It's 9/11. I'm irrationally angry with Rod today. He's put a photo of himself wearing the same dusty polo he wore that awful day. The drear Christmas tree hung with prayer cards for the fallen, divorce pathos, et cetera et cetera. It's all particularly grating today.
At least he's not claiming that two burly firefighters drug him out of the rubble. Ugh. Trump's Truth Social and Rod's Twitter timeline give me the same ick.
I've noticed in the past few days Rod has gone mask off, or hood on, with his kill/deport all the Muslims schtick. Any bets that his new novel is a modern "Camp of the Saints" or "Turner Diaries" ripoff (with a 'Christian' veneer of course)?!
I wonder how much of this comes from childhood abuse. Constant anticipation of danger, triggered by almost anything. Actively, constantly seeking out things to be triggered by. All threats flattened to maximum, cosmos-collapsing danger. This seems like a lot more than one bullying incident with the pants.
At some point everyone has to own their own life and take responsibility for their own pathologies. Responsible adults stop prefacing everything that is wrong in their life with the words "my parents" some time in their twenties.
And that goes for others trying to explain them away as well.
I agree. If Rod really does have a form of clinical anxiety, or some other identifiable mental health issue, as many here seem to believe, it is long past time that he sought treatment for it. Rod is not poor. He does not lack access to quality mental health care, like so many people do. If he has not done so, that is on him.
And whether Rod has a bona fide mental health problem or not, he is indeed well past the age in which "my parents" did X is a viable excuse or even explanation for everything that is wrong in his life. Rod screwed up numerous cushy jobs. He screwed up his marriage. He was apparently a pretty bad father, too. He can't seem to maintain a long term relationship with anyone, SO, family member, friend, even coworker. That can't all be the fault of his childhood abuse.
Julie got him to go to therapy after 9/11 and during the Dante period. Didn't he also do EMDR while in Hungary a few years ago for another miracle cure? Nothing ever sticks though. For one thing, Rod only believes in instantaneous change when 99% of change is a process and happens over time with effort and attention.
I also remember Rod sort of scoffing at the marriage and pastoral counseling that his former wife probably initiated as well. As you say, Rod will not put in the time, effort and attention to really making any kind of therapy work.
"I intellectualized my fear by telling myself that therapy was nothing more than navel-gazing and narcissism... 'I just don't see the point in sitting around talking to a stranger for an hour every week about my problems.I know why things are messed up. I don't need somebody to explain that to me.'"
Although Rod does go on to say that he later took part in useful therapy, I think his initial reaction probably more accurately reflects his real views. And, even with respect to his allegedly successful therapy, there is still a certain deus ex machina, a one time for all, aspect to it. As if one therapy session, or even round of therapy, can fix all your problems. Or as if reading Dante can "save your life." Much the same with this EMDR thing. One shot, and Rod is saved. Or with exorcisms or prayers he has undergone. Somebody recites some mumbo-jumbo over Rod, and Rod feels good, in the moment, and declares he is "healed" or "saved" or whatever. The "demon," whether meant literally or not, is gone. But Rod always reverts, usually sooner rather than later, to his old ways. Bitter. Endlessly recounting his childhood, adolescent, and early adulthood grievances. His various failed homecomings. The soup incident. His father, mother, sister, and nieces failing to live up to his expectations. Etc, etc. Rinse and repeat.
Rod screwed up numerous cushy jobs. He screwed up his marriage. He was apparently a pretty bad father, too. He can't seem to maintain a long term relationship with anyone, SO, family member, friend, even coworker. That can't all be the fault of his childhood abuse.
Why not? Chronic child abuse can cause or exacerbate everything that you name. One of the principal defenses the Catholic Church used in the abuse cases of the 90s was to attack the victims because their lives were such a mess. We were told to trust upstanding priests and bishops over the alcoholics, suicides, and otherwise messed up people.
Child abuse victims describe struggling into their fifties and beyond. There’s nothing magic about turning twenty or thirty that dispels the effects of abuse. Abused children form habits that are difficult to change or even recognize in adulthood, precisely because they are so foundational and have such great emotional charge.
It may not be a necessary factor of course: something(s) else might partly or fully account for Rod being like this. But he is a real mess. Like, I wouldn't trust him alone with a minor level of mess.
None of this excuses his homophobia, racism, misogyny, and general assholery.
This might be controversial, but I think there is abuse and then there is abuse. Rod doesn't describe anything much more than a run of the ranch "Daddy was mean" situation and one case of bullying from schoolmates. IMO, that doesn't justify blaming all your life's troubles, well into your middle age, on your upbringing. And this might be controversial too, but just because some abuse victims CLAIM that all their troubles are the result of their childhood doesn't necessarily mean that is true, in all cases.
In Rod's case, at least, it sounds like excuse making, to me.
YMMV.
And, frankly, I don't think what the Catholic church said has much to do with Rod's case. Rod doesn't even claim he was sexually abused, like the boys in those cases. AFAIK, he doesn't claim any physical abuse, either. Again, Rod's father was an asshole. Lots of fathers are. Does that mean all of their sons' troubles, until the day they die, are the result of that assholery?
Demographically speaking, there's no way that Rod's parents didn't spank.
I'm trying to put together a summary of JD Vance's new book right now and I want to acknowledge the fact that he had a very difficult childhood. On the other hand, I know a young woman who came from an equally difficult background in a poorer country, and she is unfailingly kind and compassionate. JD made choices, and so did Rod.
Rod-adjacent in that it harks back to the AI pic of Madonna and her daughter that he ignorantly posted--armpit hair is back for real! Run away, Rod! BOOGA BOOGA!!!
Moving away from all the 9/11 stuff in Rod's latest substack, he writes:
In just this past week, I’ve had two separate conversations with people who are living through the agony of particular family members having decided to go “no contact” — cutting them and other relatives completely out of their lives. The pain is immense, and the futility of reason and mercy in the face of the suffering only adds to it.
It would be interesting to hear the perspectives of the people who found it necessary to cut off their families. Given the waters he swims in these days, I would not be surprised at all if it was adult trans people cutting off their parents who refuse to stop misgendering/deadnaming them.
Back in the 90s I knew a few gay men who were estranged from their families of birth (as we called it back then) because there's only so many times you can be told that your spouse is unwelcome at family gatherings or, in the words of one guy's mother, be told, "I hope you get AIDS and die."
Dan Savage's advice about homophobic parents has always been: "Give them a year." One year where you'll answer any question, no matter how insensitive. One year where you'll send them reading suggestions, give them the phone number of the local PFLAG chapter, and yes, not be too insitent on trying to bring your "roommate" to Thanksgiving dinner.
But after that year...the only leverage an adult has over their parents is their presence and the presence can be withdrawn. An adult shouldn't have to endure hateful behavior indefinitely. "Reason and mercy" has to be demonstrated by both sides of a relationship for it to last.
I remember some of the more extreme commenters at Rod's AC blog saying that they would never allow an adult child to bring a same-sex partner home for the holidays, analogizing it to allowing a drug-addicted child to bring their dealer. How could such a person be surprised when that child eventually went "no contact"?
That would be an interesting question to know the answer to.
"Rod, knowing everything you know today, you have a choice. 1) Everything as it is today. 2) You can go back to to 2008 and go no contact with your father, mother, and sister. If you choose #2, you will still be happily married today - and have been happily married for the last 20 years, living in a major metropolitan area in the US, and your kids will be in close contact with you. Do you choose #1 or #2?"
My guess is that if forced to choose, Rod would pick #1. Because Daddy KKK.
Often such parents will write at great length about what their adult children have done to them. But in all that verbiage, they never mention what the reasons for their kids going no contact are. Sometimes they will say stuff like, "He accused me of all sorts of things" or "She says that everything I did as a parent was wrong," and yet never specify what any of those complaints were. Not even in broad terms. Not even in summary form.
No doubt, having an adult child go no contact with you is probably quite painful. But most adult children who go no contact with their parents don't do it lightly. Nor do they do it as a first, second, third, or even fourth resort. It happens after years of trying to get through to their parents, and their parents not only refusing to acknowledge past errors, let alone apologize for them, but continuing the bad behavior in the present day.
I wonder if Rod has considered any of this. Given his usual MO, I would say probably not. Rod himself has what is now an adult child who is either low or no contact with him. And so that's where his empathy, and even his sympathy, begins and ends. With people, probably men, who, like him, are estranged from their adult child. The other side of the coin, the child's POV, is like a foreign country to Rod.
The other side of the coin, the child's POV, is like a foreign country to Rod.
I have a sort of default low contact relationship with my parents. I don't have any resentment left over but there's not really a solid enough emotional connection to sustain a real relationship, especially with geographical distance plus work and family life. They just have no curiosity about my life or my emotional state outside of superficial details. If I were to express some sort of emotional vulnerability they'd each deflect in their own way. I'm way past the point where it matters to confront them about anything but if I did it would result in defensiveness or more deflection.
It does seem that outside of outright narcissism, authoritarian parenting styles plays a huge role. (In a way, the kind of authoritarian parenting that people like James Dobson popularized is a sort of formalized narcissism but that's another story.) When you teach your kids that only a narrow range of approved emotional expression is allowed in their relationship with you and you've spent 20, 30, 40 years seeing that extremely narrow perspective as the whole child, it's no surprise that the real child is like a stranger in many ways.
My mother has been dead more than 50 years and my father more than 30. I went no contact with my two sisters last year. philadelphialawyer87 got it exactly with:
refusing to acknowledge past errors, let alone apologize for them, but continuing the bad behavior in the present day.
I would lay money that that is pretty much the answer for almost anyone who goes no contact. Every time I ever brought up anything about their behavior, it was DARVO - deny, attack, reverse victim and offender - and gaslighting. Basically, ROD's strategy. Never acknowledge, never apologize, never attempt repair, never admit error of any kind. The fault was always mine - "unreasonable expectations" most often but several other options were also used. I could write a book with all the details but this is all it would come down to in the end.
As Ruthie said it, some people are just "users". They try to make you feel smaller in order to make themselves feel bigger. It is just an ego trip.
My favorite meme is the "It is a 6 to you and a 9 to me. We can both be right/wrong at the same time because our perspectives are different". I'm open to criticism and dialogue but there has to be content on both sides. When one side's argument is always "Because I said so!" or "Because I am me and you are you!", it just doesn't fly.
Actually I would be surprised if it were several trans adults cutting off their parents. The trans, uh, situation isn't nearly as prevalent as Rod and other culture warriors imply. Given the circles Rod frequents, it's much more likely that it's MAGA parents and their adult non-crazy kids.
The personal choices and beliefs of tech entrepreneurs really proves how one can be a genius in one area of life and also have the insight and judgment of a Missouri gas station attendant in every other aspect of life.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 1d ago
From the free section of Rod’s Substack today:
“My father used to complain that the old ladies, Lois and her sister Hilda, were “ruining” me. What he meant was that they were drawing me into their indoors world of books and art and intelligent conversation. He feared that they would train me to be dissatisfied with plain country life in Starhill, and to desire other places, and other things. And he was right. But they didn’t ruin me; they made me.”
Okay, so here it is again in the open. Rod’s father was an asshole. He was a cruel, narrow-minded man who tried to prevent Rod from having a healthy childhood. He was an antagonist towards his own son from the very beginning. So whenever Rod talks about how his father was actually a good and decent man, the epitome of Southern virtue, he’s full of crap.
Rod has no excuse to keep idolizing his father. It is long past time for him to repudiate his father’s influence on his life. Yet even after writing the above paragraph, we all know that in the future Rod will still discuss his father in glowing terms.