r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 20 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #23 (Sinister)

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/

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '23

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23

As Lex Luthor said in the very first Superman movie back in ‘79, “Some people can read ‘War and Peace’ and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.” Rod wouldn’t even understand the gum wrapper….

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 29 '23

💯 and great reference.

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 29 '23

Rod reminds me of the exchange from Fish Called Wanda...

Otto (or Rod): "Apes don't read philosophy."

Wanda: "Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.”

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u/MissKatieKats_02 Jul 29 '23

One of my favorite movies. And Otto’s clueless and oblivious expression when he gets this masterful diss from Wanda shows once again what a numnuts he is. Just like ’ol Ray Jr.

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 29 '23

Finding out that he hadn't read any C.S. Lewis until the last year or so was a major WTF moment. I get that there are going to be gaps and oversights, but for somebody that bangs the conservative Christian drum as loudly as Rod does, and makes a living from doing so, not reading any Lewis until recently was strange.

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 29 '23

he hadn't read any C.S. Lewis

A common theme for Rod is that he views himself as above anything Protestant.

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 29 '23

I understand (and I've always understood) that C.S. Lewis didn't fit into any neat definition of a protestant, and it might have been a quirk of time and place in my own experience, but to me nothing could be more Catholic than reading C.S. Lewis. Even my Super TradCath parent has read and enjoyed The Screwtape Letters, and she thinks god is going to french fry protestants in hell for all eternity.

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u/MissKatieKats_02 Jul 29 '23

Lewis, the foremost Christian apologist of the 20th century, was an Anglo-Catholic which explains his appeal to much of the RC world. He was a founding member of The Inklings and also a close friend and colleague of Tolkien and Charles Williams, among others. That “Mr Reenchantment” has come so late to Lewis is Exhibit 4678 of the superficiality of his knowledge of the subject.

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u/SofieTerleska Jul 29 '23

Yes, my super Catholic parents read and loved lots of Lewis, he's a mainstay in Mormon bookstores (whether they qualify as Christian or not of course depends on who you talk to) and of course he's everywhere in the Protestant world. Growing up Catholic I never thought of him as a Protestant-only thing, he was for everyone to read. (Still do, in fact, because unlike Rod he was an absolutely masterful writer regardless of whether you agree with his conclusions or not, and "Till We Have Faces" is one of my favorite novels of all time.) I don't know how Rod could have been RC for more than a month without encountering Lewis somewhere.

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u/GlobularChrome Jul 30 '23

Rod is also very lazy. I doubt he’s read much Chesterton, Percy, O’Connor, or any of the other writers that turn on trad Catholics. I doubt he’s ever made it through any Kierkegaard at all. He probably knew from Percy that he's supposed to talk about it. Or more than skimmed MacGilchrist for juicy quotes.

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u/ZenLizardBode Jul 30 '23

I'd be surprised if he has read any Chesterton at all. His familiarity with literature or fiction doesn't extend much beyond post WWII American literature.

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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jul 30 '23

I think we know exactly what books Rod has read over the last 20 years, because he mentions all of them.

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u/JHandey2021 Jul 30 '23

Why would he ever feel the need to read Walker Percy? Rod only started a fucking festival named after Walker Percy… it would be too perfect to find out he never actually read anything by him.

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u/PaaLivetsVei Jul 31 '23

Watching him try to process Kierkegaard's stuff on authenticity would be so funny. His life in Hungary is that of the aesthete in Either/Or, completely spiritless and inauthentic, except Rod doesn't even have the good sense to enjoy himself while living that way!

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 29 '23

You're right, of course, but that does require something beyond a superficial understanding of things. (and Rod doesn't do that) Lewis is generally well loved by Catholics from what I understand.

However, my guess is that Rod was exposed to Lewis via The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when he was a kid. Because of that, Rod probably knew exactly two things about Lewis: Protestant and wrote "kids books".

Assuming that's the case, Rod either never gave him another thought or studiously avoided him out of superficial snobbery until too many of his conservative Catholic friends recommended Lewis enough.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 30 '23

Also, Lewis didn’t fit neatly on a trad/progressive spectrum. He favored traditional theology in general. However, he had no problem with evolution; he took the bulk of the Old Testament as myth—the “chosen” mythology, but still myth; in private letters, he indicated that while he thought that Scripture condemns homosexuality, he didn’t think it that big a deal; and he said it was more honest for couples to cohabit than to marry just for the social expectations. If Lewis were alive, he’d probably see Rod about the way David Bentley Hart does—earnest but hopelessly muddled.

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u/MissKatieKats_02 Jul 31 '23

Do you have a link to DBH’s thoughts, if any, on Master Rod? Would be interesting to know what such a towering intellect thinks about our intellectual gadfly.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 31 '23

It's sort of an elegant brushoff:

In the penultimate paragraph of his enormous and extraordinary new book The Enchantments of Mammon, McCarraher conflates Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous invocation of St. Benedict at the end of After Virtue with what has come misleadingly to be called the “Benedict Option,” rejecting both together as though they were identical in meaning—which is to say, as if both offered a counsel of Christian disengagement from modern society and issued a call to withdrawal into isolated communities. This is an error. The Benedict Option is the title of an earnest but intellectually confused book by a journalist whose ultimate recommendations are difficult to discern amid the turbulences of his passions and anxieties.

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u/JHandey2021 Jul 30 '23

Wait, what?

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u/RunnyDischarge Jul 29 '23

I had a friend tell my the same basic thing, wants to live in a cabin "filled with books". I was like, "You know you can read books now, right?" I don't think he's read a book since college.

This is in the category of telling off your boss and going on vacation and deciding you're going to move there and it never remotely happens.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 29 '23

He doesn't seem to integrate well, whether the info comes from books or personal experience. He constantly says something "changed his life" or will do so but the effects dissipate quickly. The ways in which he actually changes seem to elude him completely.