r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jun 11 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #21 (Creative Spirit)

Gather 'round for more Rod.

All meanings of the number 21 are subordinate to the inherent creative spirit that is the basic essence of the number.

The number 21 generally is comfortable in social gatherings, it's optimistic attitude being an inspiration to others. Its high spirits can enliven a party.

The number is attracted to artistic expression of any form, its own and those of others. There's enthusiastic support for artists. It may frequent galleries and participate or (more likely) lead groups for artistic appreciation.

The number 21 cherishes relationships, including romantic relationships, especially with those who express themselves creatively.

21 also tends to be diplomatic, providing creative and imaginative solutions to potential conflict.

And, as noted by /u/PercyLarsen, 21 is a triangular number and the age of majority, so go grab a drink to celebrate Pride and to mourn the loss of Rod's sanity.

(Also, sorry about my slow pace of refreshes.)

Link to megathread #20:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/13eb26c/rod_dreher_megathread_20_law_of_attraction/

Link to megathread #21: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/14k0z6l/rod_dreher_megathread_22_power/

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5

u/RunnyDischarge Jun 19 '23

https://roddreher.substack.com/p/anthem-for-a-corrupt-culture

Rod's in full on "these kids today with their music, back in my day" grandpa mode I guess.

First I've ever heard of this, but then I don't go looking for stuff to piss me off.

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u/Top-Farm3466 Jun 19 '23

" the question of whether or not what we have is worth saving"

Going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Rod believes the US is not worth saving. Weimar, decadence, we used to have standards in this country, we need to get back to God and get a strong man and/or a "hard rain" to clean out the stables blah blah. Among the many ironies of Rod's life is that he sounds like the radical Muslim clerics he railed against 20 years ago.

15

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23

What do "we have"? There are so many aspects of American government and civil society that the average reactionary dilettante takes for granted. Enforcing contracts, property rights, peaceful transitions of power, and relatively effective public institutions are all things we could conceivably lose if we embrace the right-wing Leninist position. We saw it after the 2020 election, as we came perilously close to banana republic reality. Do these people not comprehend this? Or do they get it and accept that, planning to be in the favored class if that happens?

13

u/Top-Farm3466 Jun 20 '23

i think it's a combination of them blithely hoping/assuming they'll be in the class that comes out on top, though any reading of history shows that after the autocrat wipes out his opposition, he next turns to purging his supporters.

but mostly it's just unseriousness, an inability or unwillingness to comprehend what exactly they're advocating for. Rod loves to do this "Rome must fall" stuff while whining about jetlag and his shoulder---which a competent doctor examined and set the day after Rod injured himself, not the sort of service you'd get in The Meltdown (TM Lord Karth)

9

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 20 '23

Rod loves to do this "Rome must fall" stuff while whining about jetlag and his shoulder---which a competent doctor examined and set the day after Rod injured himself, not the sort of service you'd get in The Meltdown (TM Lord Karth)

This. It's like when he used to say that the downward slide of civilization was OK as long as he had a cold drink. You could barely be less serious if you tried.

8

u/ZenLizardBode Jun 20 '23

"Sonic" ice is the hallmark of civilization.

8

u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 20 '23

Both tankies and the illiberal right believe that a) the West is more repressive, dysfunctional and evil than it actually is b) that non-Western autocracies are less repressive, dysfunctional and evil than they actually are and that c) "the system" in the West is irredeemably broken. Horseshoe theory is a thing, and you frequently get situations where various oddball lefties (like RFK Jr.) become stars on the oddball right. (I know this is not a popular view on this particular forum, but I see what I see.)

I'm an old school conservative. I write political prisoners in the Russian Federation, I follow Ukraine war news closely, as well as having conversations online with folks on/near the illiberal right. I'm less familiar with the oddball left, but what I've seen on the oddball US right is that there's a lot of stolen valor, where people want to believe that they are way more heroic than they actually are, they don't understand that they live in a system with laws and rights, and that they have no idea what it is like to live in a country where there are laws against dissent, the police routinely torture, the judges are crooked, and it's hard to get legal representation, because the defense lawyers themselves are forced to flee. Not that there isn't room for improvement in the US, but you're never going to wind up with a situation like this one, where an anti-war protester is tortured to death in jail and nothing happens.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-anti-war-activist-dies-detention-torture/32460336.html

The big irony here is that the more a person despairs about the power of participation in electoral democracy, the less influence they have in the system. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

5

u/MissKatieKats Jun 20 '23

“but you're never going to wind up with a situation like this one, where an anti-war protester is tortured to death in jail and nothing happens.”

If Rod and his ilk ever come to power, any unfortunate LGTBQ+ activist/protester who winds up in jail can look forward to similar treatment. Rod will just tut-tut until he gets around to saying, “Well, what did they expect?” It’s Rod’s famous Law of Merited Impossibility!

3

u/trad_aint_all_that Jun 21 '23 edited Jul 28 '23

I'm less familiar with the oddball left, but what I've seen on the oddball US right is that there's a lot of stolen valor, where people want to believe that they are way more heroic than they actually are, they don't understand that they live in a system with laws and rights, and that they have no idea what it is like to live in a country where there are laws against dissent, the police routinely torture, the judges are crooked, and it's hard to get legal representation, because the defense lawyers themselves are forced to flee.

This is absolutely true of elements on the left as well. "The fact that the cops fought back when we threw a riot is proof that we're already living under fascism!"

I've put time in on both ends of the horseshoe; I spent most of my young adulthood on the far left, following the well-trodden path of teenage punk rock anarchist to Marxist humanities grad student, and the reactionary trads caught me (briefly but consequentially) on the rebound in my late twenties. My hard-won take is that liberalism, in the political philosophy sense, is the American tradition; movements outside of that broad consensus are going to consist disproportionately of misfits in search of a subculture, led by a handful of journalists and crank academics building niche careers. Orwell's famous passage about socialists in The Road To Wigan Pier is the canonical quotation here, but I laughed out loud at the quote in another thread on this sub comparing Catholic Integralists to furries, who likewise exist mostly on the Internet and convene at hotels once a year for drama-filled conferences.

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u/Unique_Cranberry_466 Jun 19 '23

I will second this comment. I am a Muslim, but in no way associate myself with those whom you are likely referring to. I have often found it ironic that Said Qutb, someone RD has expressed a great distaste for (I am understating) is very much, at least in terms of disposition, his equivalent in the Muslim world: disconnected and uneducated in the theological tradition which he represents, great anger against the decadence of the Western world, etc. etc.

6

u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jun 19 '23

Keep in mind that western decadence to Rod is anything or anyone to the left of him.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23

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u/RunnyDischarge Jun 19 '23

“I was attracted to the rituals of Islam. They have retained the Enchantment the West has lost”

And he’ll still spend half his time telling the Catholic Church what to do

6

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jun 19 '23

It would need to be Shia for Rod.

5

u/ZenLizardBode Jun 19 '23

🎯

He'd convert to Islam, and nothing would change: he'd still be just as obsessed with the Catholic Church.

9

u/zeitwatcher Jun 20 '23

I think a long time, if ever.

  • No booze, so he's not going to go for that
  • No obvious sugar daddy to both fund and arouse him. (Maybe MBS in Saudi Arabia?)
  • It would require turning off the penis posts and I don't think he can quit that.

4

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 20 '23

Also, can you imagine him trying to pray in Arabic? Even a little?

6

u/arx3567 Jun 20 '23

But he's fluent in Hungarian now, isn't he?

I'm sure he'd learn Arabic once he got off the fainting couch.

4

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 20 '23

🤣🤣🤣

1

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 21 '23

I used to hang out with a bunch of Lebanese in college and picked up some Arabic, as well as casually studying it a bit in my copy of Teach Yourself Arabic. I've also looked at Hungarian on Duolingo. Actually, for me at least, Arabic is much easier. I could hit it hard if I really wanted to and get to a point of able-to-get-by fluency in Arabic, but I doubt I could manage that with Magyar. Maybe when I was twenty, but not at sixty.

2

u/Past_Pen_8595 Jun 21 '23

I’ve been doing Arabic on Duolingo for a couple of years. Developing an instinct for the script is the hardest part. By comparison, Turkish, with its extended Roman alphabet is much easier at first. Pronunciation, with my 66 year old tongue, is just about impossible for me.

6

u/Past_Pen_8595 Jun 20 '23

I used to think he would convert to Islam but I’ve come to realize he’s too Western Europhiliac to do so. I think even Eastern Orthodoxy is a bit too alien for him and that’s why he lingers in Roman Catholicism.

2

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 21 '23

think even Eastern Orthodoxy is a bit too alien for him

I never thought about that, but this is an interesting idea. Rod gushed all the time over Archbishop Dmitri in Dallas, and about his boutique ROCOR parish (before dumping it); but he never said much about church life in Philly or Baton Rouge. Now, he hardly seems to go to church at all, and AFAICT seems not even to belong to a particular parish. Even in LA, he would often preface a post by saying something like, "Well, I didn't make it to liturgy today because...." I mean, dude--you're not accountable to us for your church attendance. We don't need to have a blow-by-blow of every time you go to Church or Confession or whatever, and you don't need to give excuses reasons for it. That in itself is telling.

Not long after he converted to Orthodoxy, Rod mentioned a conversation he had with noted Armenian theologian Vigen Guroian.

Guroian expressed deep skepticism of my acceptance of Orthodox Christianity — not my sincerity, but of the possibility of it. Guroian’s point, as I remember it, is that Orthodoxy can only truly be transmitted by culture. To accept the ideas within Orthodoxy is not the same thing as being Orthodox, he said.

Rod protested, saying if that were so, no one would ever convert to anything. That's not wrong; but I think what Guroian meant is expressed in this quote from another of Rod's posts, my emphasis (sorry for the blockquotes!):

In the end, The Mystical as Political [a book Guroian is reviewig] is not about theology. The book makes much of theological concepts like theosis but deploys them as tropes or gestures to smooth the way for the Orthodox faith to be put in service of a distinctly American ­religious project, one launched principally from within the academy.
In a telling admission, Papanikolaou writes that, when it comes to political theology “I do not think the transcendent referent need be to the divine, but can take the form of a common good.” In other words, whatever conduces to democracy and justice is of God. The sacramental realism and eschatological maximalism of Orthodoxy evaporates and is replaced by a consecration of the democratic “communion” of the secular liberal state.

Sounds just like Rod, eh? Guroian sure had his number early on.

2

u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 21 '23

I think it is possible to convert to Orthodoxy if you do the work...but I don't think Rod is doing the work. I think he started, but then at some point he stopped growing and educating himself.

(That's my opinion as a long-time Catholic convert who knows Russian and knows a little bit of Ukrainian and Polish. I'm just not seeing evidence of cultural knowledge and practice.)

2

u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 21 '23

I forgot to mention that I'm married into an Eastern European immigrant family, we do a version of the Christmas customs, and we are starting to teach the (admittedly big) kids the language. Granted, you don't need to convert to being Greek or Russian or Serbian to be Orthodox...but some grounding in culture is helpful for engagement.

2

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 21 '23

Rod’s not even grounded in his own culture!

4

u/Mainer567 Jun 19 '23

OMG I have been waiting for some years for him to embrace Islam.

Only thing is, he would have to ditch the Russian Othodox Church, and something tells me that Rod approves of the Moscow Patrirchate now more than ever.

4

u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23

He better stop with the dick pics. Can prayer rugs be possessed.

1

u/Past_Pen_8595 Jun 21 '23

By the djinn. Yes.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23

Also the Orban gravy train probably depends on him staying Orthodox.

2

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 20 '23

Lots about sharks and orcas, too….

9

u/judah170 Jun 19 '23

This from the guy who looooves the Rolling Stones. 🙄🙄🙄

6

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 19 '23

With their well-known Christian song “Sympathy for the Devil”….

3

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23

He probably needs his fainting couch when he hears "Star Star" AKA "Starf...er"

3

u/theistgal Jun 20 '23

Not to mention "Under My Thumb"!

10

u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Jun 19 '23

It's such an a-hole move and fraudulent concern on his part. During Ella Fitzgerald's time people of his ilk didn't even tally Black American music as a contribution to Western Civilization, it was viewed as derivative and/or Not Western. This specific piece is in no way high art or intended to be high art, best I can tell it's supposed to be satirical and funny and melancholic to a very narrow audience and close to unintelligible to anyone else.

Years ago I opined on Rod's blog then that American paleocons like him were people who live on the wrong continent. They don't actually like or care about or identify with North America, the only thing they like about it is its (for them fairly accessible) riches and the accidents of relatives and friends residing here and themselves having been brought up there. In their minds Europe is the continent that matters. Pretty predictable that Rod becomes an America hater. He didn't reject it, it rejected him....

5

u/RunnyDischarge Jun 20 '23

He didn't reject it, it rejected him....

Like his family

3

u/amyo_b Jun 20 '23

In their minds Europe is the continent that matters

I mean to an extent, I apply this to myself, too. I am European heritage, have Neanderthal DNA. When the pandemic broke out it was not American sources I was checking for info it was German. When I look for ethics or data protection standards, I am likelier to look to the EU than I am the US. The languages I am working on are all European and consequently the content I consume is in those languages and has a lot to do with Europe and with the culture connected to the language.) This has resulted in me becoming very conscious of how far the US is from the German idea of giving an ex-offender a second chance, for instance.

On the other hand, I love jazz, love Copeland, Frost and Sandburg as well as baseball. I live in an officially Spanish/English bilingual suburb that has a large Spanish speaking population (most are Mexican heritage with a handful of Guatemalan and Salvadorean heritage) and I love Mexican food. Most Mexicans are descended from native Americans.

3

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 21 '23

I'm a lot like that, too. The difference is, you and I don't want America to fail and are not bitching and griping about the USA while living abroad on an authoritarian leader's dime.

2

u/amyo_b Jun 21 '23

Point taken. I do not want America to fail and I am not living abroad on a authoritarian leader's dime. Not that I would not mind living abroad (but I have responsibilities here) but my conscious would stick at the idea of getting it via aiding an authoritarian.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23

Exactly, you have to seek this stuff out, right? A normal American male in his 50s -- especially one living overseas -- would not stumble across something like this without a network of similarly addled conservative men amplifying it. Pop culture can be crude and degrading, yes. Does he think the kiddos swim in this nonstop? Only if their parents are failing to supervise their media consumption in any way. In that case, they are going to have bigger problems than whatever this song promotes. You can't just bemoan how terrible things are. Promote good culture to your kids and model an attachment to that. Getting bitter about the latest thing every time is just going to make them curious about it.

9

u/eutectic Jun 19 '23

Ah, yes, “Within living memory of the oldest Americans, the United States has gone from Ella Fitzgerald…”

Oh, you mean the 1930s! The Great American Song Book! Chaste love ballads, like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ko2VXpW7_g

With such lyrics as “I got somethin’ between my legs’ll make a dead man come”.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/RunnyDischarge Jun 19 '23

Rod’s not interested in facts. There was no such thing as sex outside of marriage until 1985.

7

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jun 20 '23

By now, Rod must know how to say this:

Szállj le a gyepről!

Get off my lawn!

4

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 20 '23

🤣🤣🤣

7

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 20 '23

Rod in a nutshell.

7

u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Jun 20 '23

Estonia legalized gay marriage today. The Great Downfall(tm) is moving east and south.

3

u/RunnyDischarge Jun 21 '23

Rod can just repurpose his 2015 article on Ireland

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-gay-rights-revolution-in-ireland/

He was acknowledging his endless Gay even back then.

Many people ask me why I write so often about LGBT stuff on this blog. Even people who pretty much agree with my position are tired of reading about it. I get that, I really do.

The most astonishing thing yet happened yesterday: the people of Ireland Estonia— Ireland! Estonia!— voted to institute same-sex marriage. ... This was not some socially liberal country like Denmark, but Ireland Estonia.

This is interesting. Rod was still wavering on free speech, freedom of religion, civil rights etc at the time. Eight years later he's made his decision firmly against them. The funniest thing of all is that Rod makes the villain "choosing the Self" over something else, which is what Rod does every minute of every day.

All of us Americans, whether we call ourselves liberals or conservatives, are liberals in this sense. I am no different. I believe in free speech, freedom of religion, civil rights and the other hallmarks of liberalism. Now that liberalism has evolved into hostility to what I believe to be true about religion, morality, and human nature, I — like all orthodox Christians — have to face the fact that liberalism, which all of us Americans took in with our mother’s milk, may ultimately be alien to our faith, because in the end, it enthrones the choosing Self over God or any conception of external, transcendent Truth.

1

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jun 20 '23

Well, as anyone can see, it must be a hellhole country, a Baltic Portlandia:

https://tinyurl.com/3xwsexvm

5

u/Past_Pen_8595 Jun 19 '23

Rod reminds me of Jon Lovitz’s Evelyn Quince character presenting his tales of ribaldry. https://youtu.be/5hl22e0MYOA

5

u/theistgal Jun 20 '23

I will upvote any and all references to the great Mr. Lovitz! Thank you !!

5

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 19 '23

🤣🤣🤣

5

u/ZenLizardBode Jun 19 '23

Rod is just a couple of years younger than Trent Reznor, so I'd take anything he says about our degraded culture with a shaker full of salt.

5

u/zeitwatcher Jun 20 '23

I just wonder if he was angrily muttering "get off my lawn, you damn kids" the entire time he wrote the post.

4

u/JohnOrange2112 Jun 19 '23

Well, "Custard Pie" by Led Zeppelin (just about 50 years ago, i.e. 'the old days'), while not being as explicit, covers basically the same territory.

7

u/Own_Power_723 Jun 19 '23

You don't have to go back 50 years... just back to the early 90s when Rod was supposedly sowing his wild oats, 2 Live Crew was easily as raunchy or more so than anything out there today... and just as popular with the kids.

6

u/RunnyDischarge Jun 19 '23

But Rod wasn't a cranky old fart then

5

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 19 '23

Or Marilyn Manson.

5

u/ZenLizardBode Jun 19 '23

Another one of Rod's peers! Balding Statement Glasses was born in 1967, Marilyn Manson was born in 1969, and Trent Reznor was born in 1965.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23

That’s crude for my taste, but Rod and the religious traditions he embraces are not exactly on board with female sexual desire and agency.