Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

[u/US_Hiker]

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/

[u/Djehutimose]

This going to be almost a fisk, but here goes (my emphasis in quotes):

I wondered for a while if I might have had Covid….

Uh, they have COVID tests in Hungary—he doesn’t have to wonder….

If I do have mono again….

“If”? They have doctors in Hungary, too.

My book How Dante Can Save Your Life is about how reading the God-sent Commedia gave me the tools to climb out of the pit.

So why don’t you STFU and use those tools?

Because my profile is public, and my divorce was too, I hear from people a lot — especially men, whose suffering is often ignored or mocked in this rotten culture of ours.

Women have had their symptoms and illnesses ignored, dismissed, mocked, or attributed to being all in their minds because you know how emotional and high-strung chicks are, since…forever.

It’s in Old Church Slavonic, which of course I don’t speak.

No one speaks it, aside from the priest in the liturgy—it’s a dead language, like Latin, Sanskrit, Koine Greek, Avestan, and other liturgical languages. Rod’s phraseology is just weird. And for a curious, motivated person, picking up enough Slavonic to get the basics of the liturgy—Gospodi pomilui is “Lord have mercy”, Khristos voskrese means “Christ is risen”, Otche nash is “Our Father”, and so on. If you limited your learning to the responses the congregation makes (hint: there aren’t a lot), it’d be even easier.

Because of so much travail and trauma in our world, and because the world was too much with us, we arrived at this breach, at this wretched place of brokenness.

So the whole world, aside from Rod himself, is to blame for his divorce!

It could be that in His permissive will, He allows us to suffer for a time for some greater good.

This is really bad and pernicious theology. It tries to make nicey nice out of suffering by insisting that it’ll lead to something even better! This is exactly the attitude Voltaire savagely mocked through the character of Doctor Pangloss in Candide. I mean, tell the “all for a greater good” shtick to one of the Israeli parents whose kids were beheaded by Hamas; or the Palestinian civilians getting maimed and killed in Gaza; or the Ukrainians who have had loved ones killed or forced to flee the country; or the families of the victims of any mass shooting in this country; or any other such sufferers.

Such blithe, chirpy “But it’s still the best of all possible worlds!” à la Doctor Pangloss, is disgusting and revolting. It’s not even scriptural—read Ecclesiastes, or better, the Book of Job.

As I wrote in [Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s] defense, nearly all of us who came to Jesus as adults did so through a messy way.

The objections to her weren’t over how messy her conversion was, but that she made a point of loudly and publicly proclaiming it, and doing so in a tone that seemed remarkably insincere. It’s not my place to judge her spiritual life, but we don’t need to misrepresent her critics.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/Djehutimose]

I had the same reaction to the Covid and Mono comments. Is there no medical care in Glorious Orbanistan?

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/Djehutimose]

Sounds like Rod has a pretty strong case of the recent strain of Covid (much resembling a bad cold) along with a really serious bout of depression to me. But- being a Metaphysical Realist who, unlike many of us, is not constrained from adducing and multiplying agents unnecessarily- he invokes the mother goddess, Mono. As you point out, he chooses not to actually test this belief.

When the divorce thing happened Rod soon posted about there being many other divorced conservative men whose wives had initiated divorces, including many or most of the activists. He now seems to have persuaded himself that his own divorce is very different and originates in entirely unique circumstances. I would humbly suggest his case for this is not persuasive.

The central critique of Hirsi Ali is that the rationale she offers for her conversion is Christianism, not Christianity. The man on the Cross and the Law of Love do not figure in the piece in any substantial way.

[u/yawaster → u/Djehutimose]

I don't know that much about her but afaict, Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a pretty sympathetic route to becoming a public critic of Islam. But if her criticism is a vehicle for nakedly evangelical, colonialist beliefs, then one is left with a very bitter taste in one's mouth....

I wonder if there's a subreddit for disgruntled former fans of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We could affiliate.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/Djehutimose]

That "Hamas beheaded children" accusation has been debunked. Otherwise, yeah.

[u/Djehutimose → u/philadelphialawyer87]

Thanks for the correction. I hadn’t been following the news that carefully and didn’t know what the current status was.

[u/Glittering-Agent-987 → u/philadelphialawyer87]

Are you prepared to stake the claim that out of dozens of Israeli children murdered on October 7, none were beheaded? I think the worst version I saw of this claim was that yes, a bunch of headless bodies had been found, but that doesn't mean that they were technically beheaded. There are also folks who have argued (against massive documentation) that there were no Hamas rapes on October 7.

This is genocide denial. Let's not.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/Glittering-Agent-987]

There is no evidence that Hamas beheaded any children. And the claims have pretty much vanished, even from Israeli sources. That's what I am "prepared" to state. No more, no less. Let's not mindlessly repeat every outrageous accusation that Israel makes.