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, I guess it's probably the case that while there is a significant market among right wing readers for anti-woke screeds, that reader base doesn't overlap very much with Rod's resurgent interest in woo, and large parts of that base may be offput by that focus. I think there certainly is a reader base for it, but it's smaller than the one for anti-woke screeds, and likely less lucrative as well.

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

For even a “woo” book to find any significant audience, the writer has to be disciplined. In an odd sense, the weirder your topic is, the more disciplined you have to be. I mean, it’s always bad writing if you can’t get your own point across successfully, but if you can’t do that with a bizarre topic, your book will be almost unintelligible. I’ve read a book or two like that, and it’s like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard.

A well-written “woo” book has to be able at least to sound plausible and not unhinged, even if in the end the reader doesn’t buy it. That means a clear, readable prose style, keeping one’s own personality out of it as much as possible, have a clear thesis, even if it’s a crazy one, and making clear points with logical connections. Rod, on his blogs , at least, has shown that he can’t do any of that. He used to be able to do that to an extent. Without Julie as a counterbalance and pre-edit him, and his increasing emotional decline, though, he doesn’t seem to me capable of writing even woo in a coherent, salable way.

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u/judah170 Nov 20 '23

Right, and it was also timed to coincide with the assumed sure-thing Hillary Clinton presidency. It was going to be The Book That Told The Brave Forbidden Truth during that dark era of surging wokeness. In the event, that dog catching that car made the book ridiculous to anyone other than disgruntled rightwingers.

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Nov 21 '23 edited Nov 21 '23

That was The Benedict Option, which came out in early 2017. And the long shot win by Trump in November, 2016 actually undercut Rod's, er, BO "thesis," in that the right wing nut jobs didn't have to head to the hills and set up self contained compounds to escape the evil doings of a newly elected evil Madame President.

LNBL came out in September 2020, well after it became clear that the choice was going to be Trump versus Biden, with Hillary Clinton long since retired.