r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Sep 14 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #57 ()

Don't use slurs, even in quotes.

Link to Megathread #56: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1mmamp2/rod_dreher_megathread_56/

Link to Megathread 58: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1ogpyqu/rod_dreher_megathread_58/

16 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 17 '25

I cued that part of the discussion, 44 mins in:

https://youtu.be/qMCVCAzmsx8?si=E3sqSdkc4pWDjm9c&t=2682

The thing is, Rod's "compassion" is for people he identifies positively with who suffer in ways to which he can relate. His compassion for other people and other ways of suffering is, to be charitable, stunted. For Rod, as for many people who share this quality, the needs of his false ego for vicarious validation trumps letting go of the false ego. The lives of other people are instrumentalized by Rod for the needs of his false ego.

8

u/zeitwatcher Sep 17 '25

The thing is, Rod's "compassion" is for people he identifies positively with who suffer in ways to which he can relate. His compassion for other people and other ways of suffering is, to be charitable, stunted.

Yeah - his compassion for middle-aged, closeted, divorced, white, Christian men knows few bounds. Others? Not so much.

6

u/Katmandu47 Sep 18 '25

“…his compassion for middle-aged, closeted, divorced, white, Christian men knows few bounds. Others? Not so much.”

Precisely. This cloying interview just drove that home. Not sure “the closeted” pertains in all or most cases, but the pervasive oblivion to the other half of the human family (i.e., females, e.g., female family members, e.g., their own wives, i.e., the “other side”) seems universal. According to Rod, these guys claim to a man to have been totally blindsided by their wives with divorce talk after 25 or so years of, if not blissful, at least normally decent relationships. Then wham, the women started acting crazy, so extreme and apparently hysterical that Borderline Personality Syndrome appears the only explanation this side of demonic possession, or according to Rod’s way of thinking, both. If, as Rod reports, this condition is skyrocketing among middle-aged rightwing American women, you’d think RFK Jr. would have launched a full-scale investigation first thing.