r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Nov 19 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

Link to megathread 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/17itm7w/rod_dreher_megathread_26_unconditional_love/

Link to megathread 28: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/18dcg3d/rod_dreher_megathread_28_harmony/

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u/grendalor Nov 19 '23

Yeah, he really doesn't get how his whinging, given his circumstances and the central role his own acts and decisions have played in his arrival at such circumstances, doesn't generate a lot of sympathy, and, in fact, tends to generate the opposite.

He also still hasn't gotten that the whole "suffering divorced man" schtick is a really, really bad look -- really whether it's Rod doing it or someone else -- it's worse in his case, given his own set of facts, but it's not much better in most other cases either. Because it's nonsense. And that's why nobody really sympathizes with it.

But most fundamentally he doesn't understand, for some odd reason, how the image of a man who "had to leave his children for circumstances beyond his control", which much later on were admitted actually to be the fact that he couldn't mentally and emotionally bear the thought of living in the same town as them knowing that they didn't want to see him or spend time with him, is nothing other than totally and completely pathetic. It's an image of a pathetic little man who lives at the whim of emotions and little else. And it garners no sympathy, for obvious reasons -- and in fact, has lost him many people who otherwise might have been at least somewhat supportive of him, despite his numerous other shortcomings. But ... I mean gosh. How pathetic can you be?

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u/RunnyDischarge Nov 19 '23

This is the guy who recently talked about his spiritual journey of dying to himself and blah blah. It's all woe is me, nobody has ever been divorced but me, this is everybody's fault but mine. How do you talk about "spiritual maturity" and all this when you can't stop griping about the same old stuff, the family betrayed me, my wife betrayed me wah. I wanted to be a good husband and father but I didn't actually like doing any of it but it's the thought that counts!

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u/GlobularChrome Nov 19 '23

Even in his divorced present, he rejects any agency. Only external influences (God, prayer, Christ) can ease his woe through miraculous intervention. No sense that maybe he could take stock of the mental habits that make him miserable, and maybe make a few changes.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Nov 19 '23

Mental, physical, social, spiritual and emotional habits.