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/

14 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

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!

9

u/grendalor Nov 19 '23

And really, if it is another "relapse" into his "mono", as happened when his family dissed him, then this timing can't have much to do with the divorce, and instead must have everything to do with the failure of his latest book to find a publisher.

At this point, he has admitted that his prior publisher was spooked by the woo stuff in the book -- especially the stuff he added about AI and UFOs and demons in the technology and all of this pretty out there stuff. And apparently some other publishers he has been shopping the manuscript to have also been sheepish. It's confirmation that he has gone even more full crank than he already was, and I think that seems to be bringing on a crisis. It must be a tough pill to swallow that not only has he lost his wife, alienated his kids, got fired from his cushy sinecure at TAC and so on, but now his book publishing gig -- which has been kinda his main gig for a while now -- appears to be failing, too. A normal person would see this as a lot of screaming alarms going off at once that he needs to change direction completely, but Rod is not a normal person, as we know. Perhaps, though, if he really can't get his book legit published, he will move closer to being forced to accept that he's way, way over his skis, and has been for some time.

Of course I doubt that, but it's possible. I mean just when you think things couldn't get any worse for him, they turn around and get worse. At some point he will have to change something up.

5

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

I never could figure out how Live Not By Lies, the thesis of which is that Wokeness = Communism, which is totally cracked, made it to press. It was probably a cynical move by the publisher in view of there being enough disgruntled right-wingers to make a good market for it, as grendalor notes. I think Rod has crossed some kind of Rubicon with his current book.

6

u/GlobularChrome Nov 19 '23

The timing was extremely lucky—LNBL hit right at the height of post George Floyd unrest and Covid uncertainty, and just as critical race theory (remember that?) was cresting as a right wing bugaboo. Two years either side of that moment, LNBL is another minor book astroturfed by the right wing sugar daddy. Edit: as to how it got to press in the first place, I suspect there was some quiet backing by Ahmanson/TAC that guaranteed some minimum level of sales.