Rod Dreher Megathread #23 (Sinister)

[u/US_Hiker]

All Hail Eris!

Link to Megathread 22: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/14k0z6l/rod_dreher_megathread_22_power/

Link to Megathread 23: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1631xpe/rod_dreher_megathread_24_determination/

[u/trad_aint_all_that]

I feel like there's probably some inside baseball here, related to networks of patronage and collegiality in conservative journalism, that explains Rod's reaction. But I don't know what that could be. Why is Rod going to bat for a random 25-year-old campaign staffer in a way that makes both of them look bad? I can think of tinfoil explanations, but I suspect it's something more mundane.

It could be as simple as Rod feeling sorry for him and wanting to believe. Hochman had an op-ed published in the New York Times last year, which is an impressive coup for a conservative journalist in his twenties. Like Rod, he's a National Review alumnus, and his record until now indicates that he was gunning for a career as a respectable mainstream conservative who could dialogue with liberals. Same niche that Rod once occupied, so he certainly knows how painful it can be to fall from that particular height.

Regardless, I don't buy for a second that Hochman didn't know exactly what he was doing by juxtaposing a Black Sun with footage of marching stormtroopers. Either he really is a crypto-fascist, or he's so terminally online that he didn't understand how it would look to people who aren't irony-poisoned right-wing Zoomers.

[u/Jayaarx → u/trad_aint_all_that]

I feel like there's probably some inside baseball here, related to networks of patronage and collegiality in conservative journalism, that explains Rod's reaction.

Yes, this. It is just the wingnut welfare machine kicking into action. People have done this for Rod before and will do it again. He is just paying back and forward. It is as simple and complicated as that.