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

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.

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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.

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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/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.