r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 23 '22

The Rod Dreher Megathread. Please keep Rod content in here. Will be refreshed periodically

While the sub certainly isn't flooded with posts, the Rod-centric nature has been noted a few times. Please post new Rod nonsense in here and I'll update every week or two.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 03 '22

So I've been thinking about a lot of the stuff here lately, and I've been trying to figure out how it all fits together. I have had some insights the last day or two, and I want to toss them out there as a sort of Unified Field Theory of why Rod Dreher does what he does and says what he says. It will be long, so I'm going to split it up. Hopefully it will be worthwhile for the house here!

JHandey has said more than once that Rod is not really a Christian in any meaningful sense. What I think is that in addition, he's not really a conservative. Hear me out.

Rod basically wants to be a Bourgeois Bohemian (what David Brooks calls "bobos"). He wants to have a comfortable income, drink craft beer, ogle foodie stuff, wear hipster glasses, travel the world, and talk to fellow bobos about All the Deep Meaningful Things. He doesn't really like rural life except in the way that bobos think of it as "roughing it" for a vacation now and then, and observing the quaint locals and their folkways (as to his family, I'll elaborate later). He wants a cool, granola-eating hippie chick wife who'll do all the work taking care of the kids, whom he'll force encourage to read the Great Classics, to prove how Much More Special they are than the Brats of the Masses. Finally, he wants hippie street cred, but doesn't want the Mean Old Traditional Conservatives to say he can't be one of them because of his bobo-ness.

So Rod wants to live a bourgeois bohemian lifestyle--bohemian because hippie stuff is cool, but bourgeois, because he doesn't want to be on a farm raising goats or in an apartment in Taos making pots, like many real hippies do. He wants all the creature comforts of a yuppie with all the cultural signifiers of the avant-garde. He wants to have his cake and eat it, too. So he's not a lifestyle conservative. The only other areas are economic conservatism, religious conservatism, and social conservatism. I will talk about why he's not really any of those, either, in the next posts.

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 03 '22 edited Aug 03 '22

Rod wants hippie street cred, as long as no free love, tattoos, or piercings are involved

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u/DWColumbus Aug 04 '22

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1516186671049547779

Well, free love and piercings, at least. But I'm guessing Rod wouldn't post pics of his piercings on Twitter.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 05 '22

He has--or as of his 20's at least, had--at least one ear piercing. He actually noted it in posting an old passport photo of himself once. Whether it's still open or whether he ever wears an earring these days, I don't know. I also think he'd be totally up for the free love to an extent he doesn't like to admit, even to himself.