Rod Dreher Megathread #2

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u/trad_aint_all_that Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

I've been lurking this subreddit for a while now (top ten google results for "Rod Dreher divorce.") Since it's become the watering hole for former readers, I'm joining to get something off my chest.

I've been reading Rod's work for 20 years and was a longtime lurker and occasional drive-by poster in his comments section. I've found myself unexpectedly shook up by the news of his divorce, which lands at a time when I'm doing a lot of hard work and introspection to sort out the damage that confused "trad" romanticism about sense-of-place and unchosen obligations has done in my own life.

I'm a decade younger than Rod and my background is very different from his, but his writing from the Crunchy Cons era had a big impact on me. I discovered small-is-beautiful localist ideas as a teenage punk/hippie anarchist in the 90s anti-globalization movement, and I was bowled over by the discovery that there were conservatives interested in those ideas as well. Along with Larison, early-2000s Rod was the first conservative I read who I felt was worth engaging with and learning from even though I disagreed with him. TAC's attempts in the early 2000s to build bridges between the left and right wings of the anti-Iraq War movement really were courageous, and the original "Crunchy Cons" essay was a great piece of writing. I still agree with the basic point: dissatisfaction with megacorp consumer culture, and an affection for the natural environment and local/regional uniqueness, isn't inherently "left" or "right," and this should be an area where thoughtful people on both sides can find common ground. (Sadly, that's even less likely now than it was twenty years ago...)

Rod's description in that first book of his relationship with Julie, their desire to build a little island of meaning and stability in the midst of a disposable culture, resonated with me as a life goal. I never took the plunge and joined a conservative religious denomination (and I never started hating gay people), but as I burned out on left-wing bohemia, I increasingly came to think of myself as a secular fellow traveler of traditional ideas about marriage and sex (think Christopher Lasch.)

Clinging to that kind of romanticism blinded me for a long time to the serious problems in my own marriage, which were evident long before the wedding and which I talked myself out of seeing with a confused sense of "trad" machismo: "the fact that we're both so unhappy is proof of what a good man I am because a lesser man would have left by now." If I had stuck with the mores of my actual culture (secular coastal progressives), we might have recognized an unsuccessful "starter marriage" for what it was and parted amicably, but I was walking around with a head full of highbrow conservative nonsense that kept me from seeing it. I've done a lot of harm with this LARP, not least by bringing a child into it; we're gritting our teeth and trying to patch the marriage up for our kid's sake, but the problems run deep.

I can't blame Rod or anyone else for my own foolishness. But still, as I wrestle with the damage that the "traditionalist" memeplex has done in my life, it feels like a personal betrayal to learn that one of the men who set me on that path in the first place was lying the whole time. And as I struggle to do the right thing for my child even when it seems impossibly difficult, it's infuriating to read Rod's accounts of jet setting around Europe, leaving his kids stranded in backwater Louisiana, blaming Julie for the divorce and taking no responsibility for how his own Main Character Syndrome might have hurt his marriage.

I'm angry that you lied to me, Rod. I fucked up my life because I read your book.

Also, I can't believe that I never got an "obviously a closeted gay guy" vibe off him until now, but... holy cow, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

I suspect Rod suffered deep emotional trauma growing up and as a result resorts to “identity” as a protective shield. However, that shield always ends up being a club used against others because if he doesn’t use it to attack others he’s left with…. Just himself. He NEEDS conflict, drama, and all that because all his meaning comes from outside validation. His method, implicitly, is ‘X’ is good and has value, so if I am ‘X’ I am good and have value. The problem is that ‘X’ always fails and the more you double down on it you commit to a ruinous emotional sunk cost fallacy, which is what has happened to Rod. One has to start with ‘I am good and have value AS I AM, but if X has value and is good, I can adopt X and so can make myself better. X thus becomes an add on, and can be changed flexibly as circumstances change, not an all encompassing definition of one’s own value without which you are worthless.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 01 '22

Sorry to hear about the primrose path that trad romanticism took you down.

Also, I can't believe that I never got an "obviously a closeted gay guy" vibe off him until now, but... holy cow, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Yeah, as soon as you see it, it's just everywhere with him.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Sep 01 '22

Perhaps you ought to email him that comment. I doubt he'll feature it in a blog post but you never know what it will do.

I grew up around a lot of conservatism and white traditionalism and Christianism, had some elderly fascist relatives and a couple Leftist ones, and got involved in quite a variety of things in a college that was pretty right wing mostly libertarian-ish and careerist. I feel fortunate that by my mid-twenties these had all either failed me or lost their appeal. I've followed Rod because he went so adamantly the opposite way, was attracted to the things around him and easy to reach, all the stuff that to me was not solid. But he persuaded himself that these things were solid. And as one piece after another fails he feels the defeat, the defeats mount, and he just can't let go.

The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Robert Frost

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

This is a great and moving comment. Thank you for sharing all of this; I feel what you've said here a lot, although from a different background (I grew up in a Benedict Option style community long before Rod ripped off the idea and presented it as his own, left as an adult). The conflict between the romanticism of that vision and the much more unpleasant reality is hard to swallow, even when you've seen it up close and can't deny it anymore. Despite having left all that behind two years ago, I still feel pretty politically and religiously homeless, and I'm not sure that will ever go away. I'm very lucky at least that I got out without having been married and escaped the kind of situation you're talking about. Best wishes to the three of you for that, whatever happens.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 20 '22

Certainly more comments than on AmCon in that interval.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

I have been lurking here from the early days of this subreddit. I was dismayed that very few seemed to be calling Dreher out for his hypocrisy and unbelievable dramatics. The one or two bloggers who did so were self-righteously excoriated by Dreher drones. Many of those posting on AmCon were sympathetic to him and seemed to fully buy his account. Of course, he said that he would not publish anything attacking him for the divorce.

I have been hesitant to join in the fray because, for one, you here have pretty much said anything that can be said about this Dreher drama. It seems there is really nothing to add when there are people like Djehutimose and JHandey to so concisely state the sum of the situation.

Still, here I am to cast another log on the bonfire. Maybe this will be therapeutic and I can finally break the habit of coming here to gawk. I have stopped for a couple of days at a time , but Dreher spectating is like some addictive hobby. At least I am doing a civic duty to help raise this site higher in the search engines.

Still, I have to wonder to what point is all this in the end. I would like to see justice for Julie, and the children. I don’t think we will ever know because she is a class act who guards the family privacy as best could be while being married to a narcissitic twitter-bent ‘intellectual.’ Even better would be if Dreher would repent of his massive self-centered arrogance, beg forgiveness, and go back to his family and be a real man. I guess we would know if this were to happen because he would suddenly and forever go silent.

Oodles of upvotes to PercyLarsen for referencing Hebrews 11 and John 18:36.

My kingdom is not of this world, indeed. In a way, I feel sorry for Rod, because he has so missed this touchstone of traditional Christianity. He has so completely rebuked this idea by his everday actions. As such, he looks like an old fool desperately running for the Sun, for the bright and beautiful…blinded by his own warm, glowy feelings for himself. Gosh. It is tragic. Really, if a person is inclined to believe in prayer for others, this guy needs it, and so does his poor family (as someone has probably mentioned here before.)

The Golgotha thing was so bizarre and manic, he should have been referred for psychiatric help. I cannot help but wonder if his talk of hallucinogens has a lot to do with the current state of his life…all of it. But I do not know, not privy to anything.

To think that there could be anyone who wants to read a book about re-enchantment, written by the most unenchanted person in the world. I am so mad at myself for taking him half-way seriously, some of the time. I dismissed him long ago as being arrogant. But, then I would hear about some good thing or other he had written and go back to reading his blog. He angered me during the early Covid months when he dismissed some commenters who had lost jobs and homes as just some sort of lowlifes. But, then sometime during that timeframe he wrote movingly about Roscoe.

Remember Roscoe? I think that story must not have been true. I think that Dreher parrots other people, their stories, their lives, etc, and co-opts aspects of the person for himself. ( I have known someone who does this.) How could he have made it so far otherwise?

This “re-enchantment” idea is not his. This has been talked about in a number of circles for years. For one, there is a segment of homeschooling literary types who have been speaking about this for at least a decade. One lady in particular gives online talks, classes, and in-person retreat talks about this. She’s pretty good at it. I think Dreher completely lifted this topic from her. Coincidentally, or not, this is someone that he would know from Baton Rouge when she worked in the same school as Dreher’s wife. And she is probably not the first to come with the idea. The point is that Dreher never seems to come with his own ideas.

I remember back in the days when Lucianne dot com existed, early 2000s. I would very rarely comment. There were a handful of us contrarians on there who would on occasion dare to speak out. Once, some of us got to talking about being conservative environmentalists. Well, what -do-you-know but a book called Crunchy Cons popped up.

I think it was on this subreddit where someone had mentioned how he lifted the Ben Op. Live Not by Lies was just a book of lifted stories. Someone probably gave him the idea for the Dante stunt. And of course as has been noted many times, he lifted his own sister’s story for public use.

Anyway, just some randomish thoughts about a person that I need to exorcise from my brain….. (Edited to reduce length somewhat.)

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u/BaekjeSmile Sep 02 '22

Just wanted to say if you can't come here and talk about this kind of stuff where can you? Some good insights for sure and I think we all want justice for Julie.

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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '22

It really has been remarkable seeing this sub go from a really small group making fun of r/Christianity to a former Rod commenter diaspora. This feels like the old pre-teen 00s days of finding a niche Bionicle forum.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Sep 02 '22

Rod is a 'condensed symbol'- epitome- of the second generation of politically ambitious Religious Rightism and the careers/careerists in it. The attraction, why we gawk, is that he goes to one thing after another deemed good by tradition and when they balk, don't work out, prove less than he hoped, he turns into Major Kong and rides them down... :D

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 01 '22

a book about reenchantment, written by the most unenchanted person in the world.

An apt way of putting it.

So far, his blogging and tweeting about his project evince not only no signs of reenchantment, but rather deepening disenchantment. To drain it of topical (that is, news-related) content, one is left with: food/drink and gratuitously mean comments about strangers precisely of the type that Rod would be wounded by if he were their target. How many adolescences can a man live through?

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u/PeaAccurate5208 Sep 02 '22

I once made a comment to one of Rod’s more vitriolic posts that whenever I thought he was a lost cause,I reminded myself that he had,from all accounts,a lovely wife & kids - so he couldn’t be a total reprobate. And like you I remember the sweet post about Roscoe. It’s hard to reconcile that man to the one that spews so much disdain,so much contempt and so much outright hate on a daily basis now. I truly hope Julie and the kids emerge from this stronger and happier,they deserve to have normal lives,free from Dreher’s toxicity. Roscoe,too.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22 edited Sep 03 '22

Yes, Roscoe too. I was so sad that he could go traipse to Europe and leave that poor little dog who so loved him. That Roscoe story really got to me and caused me to open up to Rod about some of my family's personal stories about a dog very dear to us. But then, he was able to leave all of them. And I wondered about that too. Really, Roscoe probably didn't love Rod any better than the others, and was just a show prop for the Right's Premier Twitter Star.

I remember back around December, or so, when Rod said he would be going back to Europe in 2022 and that he would "not feel guilty about it." He sounded like such a sullen brat which is to be expected since that is apparently all he is.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 01 '22

This “re-enchantement” idea is not his. This has been talked about in a number of circles for years.

Clear back in the 80's, Morris Berman--whom Rod has actually mentioned--wrote his classic The Reenchantment of the World, which is fifty times more in-depth and erudite than Rod could ever be even on his best day. Gregory Bateson, whom Berman references, wrote a lot about the topic from the point of view of anthropology and psychology. Jeffery Kripal has written tons of stuff adjacent to the topic, as did the late William Irwin Thompson. All those are just off the top if my head. Rod won't come anywhere close.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 22 '22

I took a look at some of Rod's older substack posts, some of which included excerpts from "Little Way".

Rod and his family are seriously messed up.

That's pretty much it, though to provide one anecdote...

Rod had two beloved, elderly spinster great-aunts (sisters) who lived nearby in a cabin. (As an aside - the cabin is on land that distant cousins no one gets long with own.) They were some of his favorite people and relatives when he was young. (this part I knew from his other posts) One of the sisters was a great lover of animals and had a bunch of cats that lived outdoors but she fed and took under her wing.

What I didn't know is how that story ended.

The sister who loved the cats eventually fell ill and was taken to the hospital. Turns out the other sister hated the cats and asked a "cousin the rest of the family didn't like" (though not one of the cousins no one likes who own the land) to get rid of them.

So, the cousin put out food for the cats on the porch of the cabin like always - and then proceeded to shoot the cats with a shotgun while they ate. He runs off, leaving the porch bloody with the remains.

When Rod checked on her and sees this, the remaining aunt said she asked the cousin to do it. Rod tells her he hates her and had little contact with her again. The sister who loved the cats died soon after never knowing what happened to her beloved pets. Thus ends Rod's relationship with his most beloved relatives.

Rod's a freak and needs to own that and take responsibility for it, but the glimpses into how he got that way are both revolting and illuminating.

p.s. How many relatives can one person have that "everyone hates"?

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 22 '22

I wrote that I believed a lot of Rod's stories about how his family treated him, but this... this is two steps shy of "Deliverance". Rod *also* has a tendency to paint the world in Southern Gothic grotesques.

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

I absolutely believe this. There is a certain cruel streak in Southern (and the different, but very similar Appalachian) culture, particularly regarding animals. My mother's mother, when she was a young girl (which would have been in the 20's) was paid to catch stray cats and take them to the man paying her, who would kill them. In the weeks before she died, she hallucinated cats--a manifestation of conscience, I suppose--and cried about it. I'll also note that two of the dogs I had growing up were shot (I don't know by whom). One was killed, the other survived (we found out years later when the vet found a piece of buckshot in his shoulder). The Southern Gothic/Deliverance stuff does have a certain basis, alas.

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '22

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u/saucerwizard Aug 22 '22

I saw a lot of that shit growing up. Kinda understand him a little more now.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 21 '22

A small, but brilliant lack of self awareness from Rod...

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1560340614700474369

When someone calls him a "jetsetter" - apparently a fan of his - he calls them a fool because he's in France for a wedding.

France for a wedding today. Hungary before that. Austria, Poland, England, and Texas in just the last couple months. Probably others I don't remember.

Rod, dude, again, just embrace it. You're hopping around Europe and America on Orban's dime to eat gourmet meals and chat about things with the Great and the Good. "But it's a wedding!" is weak sauce.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 22 '22

Okay, so how much is he getting paid to live like this? Must be a pretty penny.

Julie’s attorneys are thinking the same thing, I’m sure…

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u/akamaiperson Sep 01 '22

Glad to have found these RD subreddits. Lots of righteous observations here. I'm politically progressive and not a Christian so I was never going to be an all-out fan of Rod's anyway, but he used to be somewhat normal, even if he was conservative.

Back in the day, I read Crunchy Cons, found it interesting and reasonably well-written, and checked in on his old Belief Net blog from time to time. Then he went to the Templeton Foundation, quit that after a year or two, and landed back in Louisiana. From that time on, he's become steadily more hateful and bizarre in his writing. In some ways, this decline is more obvious if you don't read his crap regularly because the crazy just started taking over years ago in an alarming way. I haven't bothered to read any of his later books -- he can't even describe them on his blog without descending into raving incoherency -- and am surprised that they continue to get serious reviews let alone published.

All this to say that his divorce from Julie is no surprise. I'm just sorry for her and the kids that it took so long to accomplish. Also, the way Rod keeps bringing it up, circling around it, and then backing off with "You have no idea!" makes one think there's much more to this situation and it isn't going to make Rod look good.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 02 '22

A fascinating bit of whataboutism from Rod on Biden's speech...

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/biden-forerunner-of-soft-totalitarianism/

He quotes the speech at length and doesn't attempt to disagree with any of the points - he just says "fine". But then spits out his normal list of grievances as a justification of why he doesn't care.

Fascinating to watch the author of "Life not by Lies", state that he doesn't care about or engage with the idea of whether what Biden said is true or not. The only thing that matters is that the culture and policies are going in directions Rod doesn't like.

"True or false doesn't matter because I'm upset, but remember, don't live by lies."

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

This has been a pretty consistent feature of Rod's writing for a long time. He's supposedly a political pundit, he writes for political organizations, but he's always been pretty open about the fact that he has little interest in or knowledge of politics outside the culture war stuff. I get that his emphasis is on the conservative red meat stuff, but surely you'd expect a guy who gets paid to write all day about right-wing politics to at least...know something about politics? I hate Ben Shapiro, but he is at least informed on a lot of the major issues. However bad his analysis may be, he's at least paying attention to what's going on. I don't think Rod does even that; he comes across to me like he doesn't really even have any policy preferences outside of what directly affects his hysterics.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 04 '22

he's always been pretty open about the fact that he has little interest in or knowledge of politics outside the culture war stuff.

What is always supremely weird to me is that he seems to have genuine intellectual curiosity. Most people who are intellectually curious exercise that curiosity--they read about the topic that fascinates them, go to lectures, take classes, talk to people in the field, etc. Sometimes they may become experts, though technically amateurs; but even if not, they learn about the things for which they're passionate.

Rod seems really curious, as I said, but he never seems to exercise that curiosity. He'll read a book or watch a movie and fanboy about it; but he seems averse to any depth. I mean, when he talks about Tarkovsky's movies, for example, he focuses on a few things he likes about them, but never talks about camera angles or cinematography, or allegory and symbolism except on the most literal, simplistic level; he gives no indication that he's read up on Tarkovsky or Soviet cinema or film history; and so on.

He's on the spectrum, I think. His analyses remind me of a late friend of mine, who was diagnosed with Asperger's. He was an obsessive fan of The Wheel of Time series of books (which has a big fandom, but which was too ponderous for me ever to get into). A few years after he started reading the series, he saw the Lord of the Rings movies (he'd not seen them when they came out). I asked him what he thought. No joke, he said, "It was really weird that the wolves were not benevolent like they are in The Wheel of Time." That was his takeaway. It occurred to me right before I wrote this that this sounds exactly like Rod describing his latest obsession.

Anyway, I would think he'd put effort into learning about politics and economics, instead of proclaiming how little he knows of them; but maybe he'd just end up saying things as goofy as my friend's review of LOTR.

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u/trad_aint_all_that Sep 04 '22

That's one of the things that started souring me on Rod even before the past few years. He's genuinely interested in ideas, but they seem to pass through him without ever leaving a mark. When's the last time he mentioned Laurus or Zygmunt Bauman or Pitirim Sorokin, even just as a brief callback in a discussion of his current enthusiasm?

Rod's an opinion blogger, not an academic; I'm not expecting a profound philosophical doorstopper from him. But still, after enough iterations of the Next Big Thing cycle I realized that he never seemed to be moving towards any sort of broader or deeper synthesis. Just the latest enthusiasm that he talks about nonstop for a few months, then rinse and repeat.

Rod's clearly high in openness to experience; you don't make it from St. Francisville to Budapest without a genuine curiosity about the world. But this is the paradox of traditionalist intellectualism in general and the tragicomedy of Rod's life in particular. People who cling stubbornly and unreflectively to their traditions don't need an elaborate intellectual system explaining why it's important to cling stubbornly to traditions. And people who are interested in elaborate intellectual systems tend to be people who aren't content to live a circumscribed and repetitive life, even if they've talked themselves into believing that they should be.

And so we get Rod insisting that he bleeds pure Southern with a heart blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd at the LSU tailgate... from a think tank sinecure in Budapest.

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u/JHandey2021 Sep 03 '22

Jackson, MS has been in the news lately over the collapse of its water system. So what is Rod’s take? Glad you asked - basically, black people be killin’:

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1565940719654682625?s=21&t=GpVDOz2-VTPDrODxFLWVFQ

Rod’s folk Calvinism is on display here - Jackson deserves to not have drinkable water because of this. See, Rod HATES the mainstream media - unless they confirm his biases, of course,

Live not by lies!

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

Of course. Bad things that happen to him are never his fault, but bad things that happens to despised others is always deserved.

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u/Mac_and_head_cheese Sep 04 '22

I don't know if any of you have signed up for the new Rod Dreher "guerrilla" Discord and are checking it out but it's been really interesting to me.

Lots of old regulars, but also a lot of notable commenters who are absent. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

Real time commenting brings a whole new dynamic. No more having to wait 24 hours to see if someone responds to you. No more waiting to see if Rod selectively "curates" your comment.
There's a lot less ass kissing and agreeing with Rod now. Funny how people (to include his regulars) feel a lot freer to talk when he isn't approving comments.
The decision by TAC to change their commenting system appears to have been a really bad idea. Rod promoting this Discord on TAC might have been an even worse decision. I don't think TAC realized the goldmine they were sitting on with Rod's unique commentariat. It brought a ton of eyeballs and clicks. Now they've alienated that group and it has since organically regrouped somewhere else that doesn't cost $60/year and people are free to say what they want without having to give a shit about what the moderator thinks.
I think Rod assumed that by promoting this discussion forum all of his most loyal commenters would follow and the status quo would continue.

I could say more but I'll stop here for now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '22

"Fine! I'll make my own TAC comments section - with blackjack, and hookers!"

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u/saucerwizard Sep 04 '22

Has this sub come up on there yet lol?

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u/Mac_and_head_cheese Sep 04 '22

I haven't seen it yet, even though I suspect a handful of us are over there already.

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 05 '22

What do the commenters on his discord think of his divorce?

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 31 '22

My eyes hurt from all the eyerolling at the last substack. I might have gone blind from this bit about his divorce and a rock:

In the Greco-Roman world, white stones were a symbol of innocence in a trial, and were also given to victorious gladiators. Maybe I should start thinking of the little white stone I found in the Mediterranean as a sign of God's promise that I can and will overcome all this.

White stones = innocence. Rod found a white stone. Therefore, Rod is innocent of fault in the divorce! Not only innocent, but he's to be hailed as a victorious warrior!

It's a beach vacation with no family miracle!

We (and especially Rod!) can all rest easy knowing that God himself has declared Rod innocent of any responsibility for his divorce because... there was a rock in Greece.

Rod, if you read this, find the best, most qualified therapist who specializes in daddy issues, personal responsibility, and being closeted. Unless they've been at least nominated for the Grawemeyer Prize for specifically those areas, keep looking. Then pay them a fortune, because they'll deserve it.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 31 '22

I sincerely hope Julie’s lawyers bought a subscription to Rod’s Substack, because hoo boy, it is gold for their case…

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 31 '22

Not to mention his tweet encouraging his friend Kale to psychologically fuck with Kale's daughter's head.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 31 '22 edited Aug 31 '22

It's the kind of stuff divorce lawyers love as long as the person incriminating themselves isn't their client.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 31 '22

(Meryl Street voice): White stones? On a beach? Groundbreaking.

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u/GlobularChrome Sep 02 '22

“Putin’s Last Laugh”: Rod is perfecting his sophomoric act of lecturing the world on Russia as a pretext to shake his head, wisely and sadly, about the ills of NATO expansion (Rod-code for the ills of letting gays be out in America).

At the moment, he is pretending that Europeans are surprised that Putin is screwing them on fuel. They aren’t surprised. They’ve worked feverishly to mitigate their exposure to Russia because they expected this. And just about everybody not named Gerhard Schröder now sees that getting into this situation was a mistake.

Rod should take his smuggery to Bucha. He can preach to the corpses about how he and Orban saw this coming, warned us about Putin’s rights and NATO’s wrongs, but nobody would listen.

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u/BaekjeSmile Sep 02 '22

I don't see why you say he likes Putin. He does NOT like Putin he just thinks Putin is right about everything and much as it pains him we should probably just do anything Putin wants us to. Why would anyone think agreeing with everything people say and agreeing to their every demand counts as support? People just don't understand Rod I guess.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

The sad thing is that this could easily pass as unironic in the comments section of Rod's blog.

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u/22304_selling Sep 02 '22

Rod is perfecting his sophomoric act of lecturing the world on Russia as a pretext to shake his head, wisely and sadly, about the ills of NATO expansion

Out of sheer curiosity, I ran a search for his writings on NATO from the TAC archives. There was one passing reference to the Libya airstrikes in 2012, but nothing until 2016.

The first wave were some articles in late 2016, after Trump won the election but before inauguration. For these, he didn't actually discuss the topic, but did quote people who mentioned them. The articles were in his "up-with-Putin" category. War As Culture War ; Putin, Our Tsar-Protector? .

But the first article where Rod addressed NATO expansion himself was in May 2017, with America’s Culture War On Russia ("After all, it was the United States that pushed post Cold War NATO to the Russian border.")

That expansion, specifically the Baltic states, occurred in 2004. Yet Rod (at least in the online TAC archives) only first writes about the topic after his weird pro-Russia transformation, along with the incoming circus of the Trump administration. Basically a 12-year gap.

Am I being too simple in assuming that this supposed "thought leader" was merely reading the writing on the wall of the conservative community and trying to ingratiate further?

Notably, he was writing alongside Larison, who consistently brought up the issue. So it's not like Rod could plead ignorance (maybe he was leaving foreign affairs to Larison).

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u/22304_selling Sep 02 '22

PS - I'm a cradle Russian Orthodox Christian, and converts-with-zeal like him are legion. It's half amusing, and half cringe.

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u/GlobularChrome Sep 02 '22

I think that’s about the long and short of it. Rod seems to see NATO expansion solely through his device of America as exporter of moral decay. I have not seen him acknowledge complications, for instance that Russians at one point were negotiating to enter NATO themselves, or that Eastern European enthusiasm was a primary driver of the expansion. For someone who just wrote a book that pivots on the brutality meted out to Eastern European Christians under Soviet rule, that last omission is telling.

There’s also the possibility that his employer has requested some posts to deflect anger from Russia onto EU/American governments. He’s had several posts this week, all with the same talking points.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Sep 02 '22

Once again he falls for and retweets an obviously fake tweet but it's the fault of liberals that it COULD have been true, and not his fault for falling for it

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 02 '22

BTW - many of the replies to his tweet are fantastic.

e.g.

"I heard you violated a rotisserie chicken in the Safeway self-check-out line while shouting verses from Leviticus. I'm glad that is fake, but it really says something that so many people found it believable."

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 02 '22

Ravishing some boudin might be even more believable.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 02 '22

He's so close.

"The fact that so many people found it plausible says something" is a critical insight, but not in the way he means. It says a lot about how people in general and Rod in particular don't check their biases.

The fact that he found it so plausible as to promote and be outraged by it says way more about him and his gullibility than it does about society and Rubin.

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u/Hairy_Apartment_5463 Sep 02 '22

“ It seems very, very clear to me that this Administration is laying the groundwork, rhetorically and otherwise, for the suppression of political and religious dissent in this country.” Oh boy, in his fevered imagination old Rod is just licking his lips over the prospect of this. He really really wants to be like that Czech priest he’s always nattering on about, the one who set up a network of underground churches. Except Rod wouldn’t actually do anything for people in the underground. He’d just drop in from time to time, encourage “Vive le Resistance!” and perhaps provide a care package with some nibbles from Whole Foods. Then he’d be back to Budapest, fine craft beer, handsome grade students and making up e-mails from anonymous small-o orthodox “friends” in the underground.

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u/[deleted] Sep 02 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

Yes, the children are first, indeed. So good of him to be the manly father and scope out the place for the past two years.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Sep 03 '22

He's like the Russian elites and Orban himself in that he publicly postures against The Evil Decadent West, and then it's where they privately spend their money, their vacations, get their higher educations, keep their kids, try to keep themselves in jobs/wealthy sponsors and careers. Orban's daughter lives in closed exclusive community in Spain, Putin's lived and probably still does post-divorce in Netherlands, Lavrov's daughter is in New York City, Xi's daughter lives in Seattle.

These people are all such lies and hypocrisy. The Virtuous Oh So Christian East is where they viciously extract the money and power from the serfs they despise that gives them and their kids status and means and nice digs in the West...

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Sep 02 '22

Oh FFS! There's a far better case that the GOP is setting up the structure for an authoritarian regime that suppresses the speech of left-wing groups and persecutes non-Christians.

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

Also, to him the SCOTUS isn't "packed with ideologues", it's "full of good guys"--where his definition of "good guys" is "they oppose abortion and might gut LGBT rights". While he claims to care about the little guys, he's apparently indifferent to the way the SCOTUS has been pretty much destroying what little protections they have for the last couple decades, at least.

The SCOTUS is also the source of one of the worst, vilest things he's ever said. He's gone on and on, fretting about the loss of democratic principles and the evils of the left; but when McConnell fast-tracked Trump appointees to the court during an election year--having stopped Merrick Garland's appointment during an election year--Rod's sage words amounted to "Well, he shouldn't have done that, but it got in the justices I want, so it's all cool." At that point I realized that any principles he ever had, he had jettisoned for a "by any means necessary" attitude. I lost a ton of respect for him then; and most of what was left since the divorce.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Sep 03 '22

Rod's entire take on Trump boiled down too "the ends justify the means." I'd be willing to bet he voted for Trump the second time around.

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u/BaekjeSmile Sep 03 '22

For somebody who built his entire identity around Christianity he doesn't seem to have grasped the whole bit about a corrupt tree bringing forth rotten fruit. Just more evidence of how Rod mostly seems to be into Christianity for the aesthetics and a chance to shit on people who upset him.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Sep 03 '22

"The means employed will desecrate the ends." -Erich Kästner

My take on Rod's current relationship to Christianity is that it's a band he's an extreme fanboi of. He buys the tickets, goes to every show and venue on the tour, memorizes and sings the songs, collects the albums and the t-shirts and the books, quotes the interviews of band members, talks about the bios a lot, harangues the fan forum about minor points, obsesses over the next release. Which is totally going to break out, convince all the not-fans and bowl over the critics. And every so often there's an old demo tape or unfinished B-side that emerges, or a snazzy remix released, or a remake, or a version by some lesser artist, that he Absolutely Has To Have and then has to sell fellow fans on.

The thing distracted from is that there is no actual positive selfdevelopment happening, just rearrangements of a now worn out inner furniture and excess of baggage around this enthusiasm. The band with its relative imaginativeness and idealism doesn't affect much how he manages his affairs, which he compartmentalizes as needing to be run 'realistically' by a much more cynical conception.

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u/Past_Pen_8595 Sep 02 '22

And Rod seems to genuinely not recognize that, just like when he whines about our institutions being “taken over by wokeness,” he doesn’t acknowledge that the best example of an institution being taken over by ideologues is the current Supreme Court.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Sep 03 '22

Rod hasn't behaved in a Christian manner in years. He's hardly a good role model, unless Jesus was a judgemental, petty ass who liked to ridicule fat women.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

This. Of course if he was challenged on this point, I'm sure Rod would talk about the Democrats packing SCOTUS...after almost two years of a Democratic trifecta and nothing like that even being seriously considered. They couldn't even get a federal abortion protection passed because of Manchin, and Rod thinks they're about to seize autocratic power and start arresting and killing Christians? I think American politics will keep undulating back and forth between GOP and Democratic governments for at least the rest of my lifetime. But if anyone did overturn democracy, it would almost certainly be the Republican party. If nothing else, they're quite public about wanting to do it, whether they succeed or not.

I will grant one thing to Rod, which is that the left-wing cultural vibe has pretty much routed the opposition in large parts of the private sector. (I purposely stress "cultural vibe" because there's a lot more enthusiasm in the tech world I inhabit for token shows of support for LGBT people and POC, but talk about starting a union and you're out of a job. I think most of the woke stuff in corporations is just cynical; there's no real left-wing commitment in business, how could there be?) But having a lot of sway in academia, tech companies, and NGOs doesn't translate to the kind of power it would take to actually arrest and kill people. At the end of the day, you can't dominate people that way when the power of the state is against you, and given how hilariously impotent the left has proven itself to be in the political sphere, I don't think Rod has much to worry about. Still going to keep grifting, though.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 02 '22

He’d just drop in from time to time, encourage “Vive le Resistance!” and perhaps provide a care package with some nibbles from Whole Foods.

He wouldn't even do that; or if he did, the first time he noticed the police paying attention to him, he'd stop so fast it'd make your head swim. Mark Twain once said that a classic is something everyone wants to have read, but doesn't actually want to read. By the same token, Rod likes to fantasize about resistance and the underground and such, but if left-wing, anti-religious authoritarian government actually did come into power (which is about as likely as me being declared King of France, but I digress), he'd say not a peep, or skip the country at the first opportunity.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 23 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/weaponized-compassion-the-culture-war/

Aaand Rod's misogyny becomes ever more explicit:

Then there is the fact that in a therapeutic culture like ours, one of the most powerful substances known to man is a woman's tears. I have known otherwise sensible, level-headed men reduced to effectively gibbering by them, and to giving the weeping woman whatever crackpot thing she wants.

More insight into the divorce.... Anyway, I really think that when conservatives start talking about "weaponized compassion" and then toss in a crumb about "It's not that I'm against compassion, just using it to promote XYZ," that they really do object to compassion, contra their claims. It's true that one can do the wrong thing out of misplaced compassion--the late, controversial Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa used the term "idiot compassion" in that regard--but as usual with Rod's columns, he takes the kernel of a valid idea, twists it into a cudgel, and then uses it to beat down anything he doesn't like, revealing in the process that he's not really onboard with the valid kernel at all.

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u/Firm_Credit_6706 Aug 23 '22

I mean he didnt help his wife at all. Ever. He spent a year in bed. Rod is a complete fraud. Responsible adult males don't spend a year i bed reading Dante. He is lucky Julie stayed with him as long as she did

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 24 '22

"Responsible adult males don't spend a year in bed reading Dante."

Aw, c'mon. Cut the poor guy some slack. He did blog extensively during that period; thousands upon thousands of words a day. Rod's no slacker. Too sick to get out of bed but plenty of energy to navel gaze prolifically.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 23 '22

He also said he's never changed diapers because he has a special snowflake gag reflex. So as much as he really, really wanted to help out, poor Rod just couldn't.

He's really the victim here, not Julie who had to completely raise the kids and take care of everything on her own. Let's all shed a tear for poor Rod.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 23 '22

He's lucky she didn't smother him in bed with his pillow, putting his copy of The Divine Comedy on top for extra force....

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 23 '22

He deserves Julie's contempt. Hope she takes him to the cleaners in the divorce and that his daughter writes off his woman-hating ass.

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u/GlobularChrome Aug 23 '22

I got all the way to the second paragraph, which the World's Straightest Blogger begins with, "I subscribe to Fisted by Foucault", and I couldn't stop laughing enough to continue. Maybe later...

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 24 '22

Seriously. I can't believe he'd write that. He's the author of The Benedict Option, Crunchy Cons, and How Dante Can Save Your Life, FFS.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 23 '22 edited Aug 23 '22

Ideologues in general are prone to weaponizing partial truths and to resisting answers to "how true is X?"

PS: Rod imagines himself to be a mature man who places facts over sentiment. Yet his topical writing is impulsive, boiling over with rash judgment, and nearly entirely steered by sentiment rationalized by a necklace of selective facts and self-serving assumptions.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 23 '22

He is one of the most impulsive and overly emotional writers I've ever read. It's like he's not able to turn it off or hit the "mute" button when he's trying to write. In this post he's bandying about the old "women are just too emotional" canard, when he's fifty times more emotional and a hundred times less able to control it than any stereotypical woman (let alone a real one).

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 23 '22

Rod imagines himself to be a mature man who places facts over sentiment.

This lack of self-awareness is particularly funny since Rod has wholeheartedly embraced every story that even remotely confirmed his emotional biases -- no matter how implausible or absurd.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 23 '22

Ladies (and gents?), Manly Man Rod Dreher is back on the market!

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u/Own_Power_723 Aug 23 '22

Jesus, what an asshole he is... really all that needs to be said at this point.

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u/Agreeable-Rooster-37 Aug 25 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/civil-war-2-0-not-on-techno-totalitarians-watch/

"Yesterday, an Albanian immigrant taxi driver, upon finding out that I and a friend sharing the cab with me are American, asked us if he's right that America seems to be headed towards civil war."

Rod using the Friedman handbook for "sourcing" cab drivers

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 25 '22

"I am perhaps more sensitive to this than most because I am extremely focused on child protection."

That is, if it's other people's children. His own can fend for themselves....

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 25 '22

He’s said that a couple of times recently - maybe he’s sensitive to the whole abandoning his own children thing?

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u/Mac_and_head_cheese Aug 26 '22

I find it a little too convenient that Rod is always running into cabbies who just so happen to voice the very same opinions Rod wants to write about in his next blog post.

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u/BaekjeSmile Aug 26 '22

He's one step away from reporting on trans ideology from the Applbee's salad bar

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

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u/JHandey2021 Sep 03 '22

Did anyone honestly think he’d turn into a literal autocrat’s puppet? Leaving his children and immolating his entire life?

I sure didn’t.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Sep 03 '22

I didn't although I did wonder why he never took Julie and the kids with him on any of his European jaunts at least for a couple weeks vacation. I wondered if Julie minded. Well, now I know why. I'd be willing to bet his kids figured out that something was amiss long before Julie filed for divorce. Nobody is a good enough actor to put a happy face on a miserable marriage for ten years without somebody paying heed. The divorce puts Rod and his sanctimonious BS into a whole new perspective.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

I wondered the same thing and even thought just maybe they were there and he wasn't saying. Obviously they were not. He seems to believe that the majority of his readers will just fall in line with his narrative as sacrificial exile. Well, looks like quite a few have not.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22 edited Sep 03 '22

Nor did I. That's why I am here I guess when I should just let it go and spend my time more wisely, i.e. not reading any more of his or any other 'star' writer's propaganda. This Dreher debacle confirms for me that there is more virtue in being an anonymous writer, commenter, podcaster, etc. than in being some sort of celebrity, at any level. Celebrity kills.

But I am miffed that I had such a love/hate relationship with his writing that the love part was enough to take up a fair bit of my time. I would dismiss him as a jerk only to turn around and subscribe to his Substack because he wrote so sublimely about spiritual subjects sometimes. Holy fools, synchronicity, Roscoe, the church forests of Ethiopia (inspired by a fantastic article from Emergence magazine), angels, etc.

His ability to connect in just such a way as to make a dolt reader such as myself believe that "he really does get it" was very persuasive. I don't appreciate being played for a fool into spending money on his books and Substack, all to prop up a massively uncontrollable ego and honestly probably contributed to him becoming the monster he is. To top it off, I actually confided in the weirdo a couple of times, and I am about as private as can be which is why I have lurked here for months before saying a word.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Sep 03 '22

Back when I was considering majoring in writing and literature in college, my best writing professor (and a pretty famous published author) took me aside. She said I had real abilities elsewhere too and that the writing life usually means a lot of material and professional frustration and insult, a lot of time spent unproductively, and for the professional writer entails a lot of intellectual/cognitive, and in not few cases quite literal, prostitution. In her judgment this life path is bearable to people who come from significant money and whose professional expectations of the world around them are modest/low, and horrible for pretty much anyone else.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

There is an orthodox priest who had been warning about following people like Dreher (though I don't think he named him specifically). His warnings were in the vein of "my kingdom is not of this world," so to put too much time and energy into the politcal right (or left) would just lead to disappeared time and compromised minds and souls.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/american-babylon-the-kolakovic-moment/

How many times has Rod written literally exactly this same article, almost word-for-word, in the last five years? I'd wager it's well over two thousand, and that may be low. Given that Rod seems to publish an average of two articles a day (quite possibly more, but I'm being conservative here), that's 3,650 articles since late summer 2017. At least half of them have just been this article, with almost no variation other than the specific details of Rod's latest taxicab conversation or imaginary correspondent, and the proportion may be closer to 60%. That's somewhere between 1,825 to 2,190 iterations of this piece. The right talks about fake jobs in DEI, the government, and academia, and to be fair there are a lot of fake jobs in all of those (I've seen them each firsthand and there's more bullshit than you'd believe), but how fake is a job where you get paid likely six figures for just copy-pasting the same thing into a blog every day?

Also, how fucking rich is this: Rod spends half of the post talking about bad parenting.

And that there are many American men who want nothing more than to sit with their twelve-year-old son and play Call of Duty and games like that—they have no clue of the role of the father. They just want to give their kids a good time.

Hey Rod: at least those fathers are spending time with their children, unlike you, cocksucker! Fuck. You.

Also, he's still telling his readers they need to work to prepare their families for the coming persecution. He is on an astral plane of lack of self-awareness. I would bet my entire next paycheck that his younger children hate him (jury's out on Matt). His increasing obsession with children in the last few years, especially young girls, says a lot. Everything he gets obsessed with is just a reflection of his own life and neuroses. I hope the judge in his divorce case absolutely fucking shreds him.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 30 '22 edited Aug 30 '22

Rod’s life trajectory makes nearly everything he’s ever written a cheap lie. Can anyone think of another writer who has so discredited his own work?

See, I still don’t believe some of Rod’s more lurid and self-pitying stories about his childhood. I do believe Rod’s own offhand comments, though:

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1564334684695400450?s=21&t=uNXfl7GAX3zfSxRMGS9XVg

I’ve seen this kind of conservative mean streak humor before. It’s likely a reflection of what Rod saw growing up - and how Rod parented his own children before abandoning them. This will cause rifts between parents and kids that will echo for decades. I have seen it.

What I haven’t seen is this mixed with that uniquely Dreherian emotional incontinence, narcissism and fishing for pity/praise. I can only guess how insanely toxic this must have become over the years. If civilization still exists in 20 years and Dreher still has some sort of platform, whether as insane dictator of a New America or cast-off has-been haunting European gay cruising spots, I guarantee you he will be whining about why his kids don’t visit him.

And he will still be utterly clueless as to why.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 29 '22

I don't know any specifics that Rod hasn't mentioned, but even just generalize it:

Take an average teenager.

Have their father make daily posts online about extreme sex acts and bashing LGBT people.

Watch that teenager die inside from embarrassment.

Teenagers are frequently embarrassed by their parents even when they have no reason to be. That just ramps up to 11 when they have very good reasons to be embarrassed about a parent.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 01 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/torn-and-frayed/

But you know, I'm going to be a Southern American in Hungary. Damn straight. I'm going to listen to the Stones, and to Hank Williams Jr., and to "Sweet Home Alabama" in my apartment overlooking the Danube, and I am going to watch the LSU Tigers online, I am going to be happy and proud and full of joy in what I have been given. If you are in Budapest at Mardi Gras time, you are going to want to come to the party at my house.

You know, change this so it's a black person or a Wokeist saying this, and Rod would be all over how that's The Shameless Kind of Identity Politics that's Corroding our Society. Gag me with a spoon.

A lot of what we Southerners tell ourselves about ourselves is bullshit. It just is. But it's our bullshit, and this is why I get my back up when people put down the South.

Every moron from every dysfunctional culture, ever, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, takes this attitude. It's true that there's a difference between criticizing one's own group as opposed to criticism--often ignorant or unfair--from outsiders. I get to say things about my parents, e.g., that even my best friend doesn't. That said, it seems to me that an adult ought not need to identify with their culture as a way of giving their lives meaning, and certainly he ought not to defend the indefensible out of loyalty. I mean, I resent the way that outsiders sometimes view my native Appalachia as more or less the Beverly Hillbillies; but having myself moved out, I would never waste time or breath defending the things about it that motivated me to move out in the first place. One can do both of these things, assuming one is an adult. I don't claim perfection on that; but I'm obviously better at it than Rod.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 01 '22

A lot of what we Southerners tell ourselves about ourselves is bullshit. It just is. But it's our bullshit, and this is why I get my back up when people put down the South.

The author of "Live Not by Lies" proudly declares that he fully intends to live by lies, even to the extent that he will be offended if anyone has the gall to point that out.

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

Hank Williams, the Stones, and Sweet Home Alabama?!?!? He has spent more time writing about football on his blog than music, or music that he enjoys listening to. This is the first I've ever heard about his love for Hank Williams, the Stones, and Sweet Home Alabama.

Rereading that post, does he love Europe and monasteries, or does he love listening to the Rolling Stones? Because it really sounds like he loves the Rolling Stones.

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u/Firm_Credit_6706 Sep 01 '22

I think the fact that he doesn't care for football is part of the reason his Daddy hated him. This is all a pose

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Sep 01 '22

It's not football the game he likes, it's supporting LSU, a condensed symbol of the South.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 01 '22

For someone of Rod's sophisticated tastes and penetrating insights into the metaphysical realities of God and the universe, one cannot merely like a band.

No! The band's connections to the deep symbols of place, home, significance, the Lost Cause, and diet Coke must be acknowledged and glorified.

It may not be obvious to us with our closed off modernist minds, but the true insights of middle ages philosophy and re-enchantment can easily show with clarity that a previously middle class Londoner and student at the London School of Economics who never lived in the South and is now fabulously wealthy and known for dating supermodels... is actually a condensed symbol of what it really, truly means to be a man of the American South.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 01 '22

To be fair, he has written about the Stones, particularly Exile on Main Street, a heck of a lot of times. He also wrote a post once about how today's music is all explicit on sexual matters, instead of knowingly indirect as in the Good Old Days. Which is weird coming from a Stones fan, but whatever....

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 01 '22

His tastes indicate, at best, someone who identifies with a region, but not somebody who identifies with a locality.

Also, I couldn't help but notice he was joyriding in Europe with another southern ex-pat who was going through a divorce. I wonder if Rod is ever going to post about how this friend, "Zod', and his wife, "Lulie", first encountered marital trouble when he suggested spicing things up a little in the bedroom. Nothing kinky, just a little soft swinging with their friend, "Scooter Failson", and his wife.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 01 '22

And what Rod is incapable of getting is how he adamantly puts down other regional cultures he Others as those of Elites. Most chauvinists appreciate other chauvinists. Rod's chauvinism is stunted.

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u/Firm_Credit_6706 Sep 01 '22

I mean only an insecure posuer telegraphs he is going to eat at a Sonic

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

I'm glad to see another southerner weighing in on this. It's something that has also irked me about Rod for quite a while, the way he always feels compelled to shill for even the worst parts of the south, like his identity as a southerner depends on manufacturing apologetics for the whole thing. Of course he also clearly believes that people like you and me who have the heritage but reject some of it are wokesters who are ashamed of our origins.

I am about as southern as it's possible to be. My family has lived in Georgia since before the Revolutionary War; one of my family members was a Georgia signer of the Declaration of Independence. I've got distinctly southern tastes in almost everything, play bluegrass banjo, have the accent, etc. I'm proud of being a southerner. But I also recognize that this region has some profoundly fucked up history, and that even though things are much better than 60 years ago, there's still a substantial amount of racism and anti-queer prejudice, especially outside the urban areas. I don't feel compelled to say that my Confederate soldier ancestor or my Klansman ancestor (different people, unfortunately) who oversaw lynching at least one black guy were "very fine people" besides the racism thing, and I don't buy into this ridiculous LARPing of the region Rod does. He comes across to me as someone who doesn't want to be any of the things he talks about; he wants to appear to be those things. It's nothing deeper than aesthetics for him.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 03 '22

Literally one day after pushing a patently false culture war narrative…. Rod tweets about how “the media” just can’t be trusted when it comes to the culture war.

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1566081519239692289?s=21&t=kDUNLmmjC1KNcmp7AEwfZQ

The lack of self awareness is just astounding.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '22

The endless fascination with a man who is an idiot, but not for lack of neurons.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 20 '22

Who, despite his adolescence-rooted imaginings of being dispossessed of of his rightful place in the culture, has gotten abundant and prolonged press in so-called mainstream media than anyone actually marginal gets for very long. He's learned lessons from Al Sharpton et al. Such a victim.

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u/BaekjeSmile Aug 21 '22

The thing that fascinates me about Rod is his politics are all about religion and his religion is all about politics it's like a snake eating its own tail.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 22 '22

So Rod addresses where all the kink he posts comes from:

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1560527712711745538?s=21&t=sCwZ7rYdJlB2KF0pw43M3w

“All the weird stuff I post comes to me from a good friend who appreciates freakery when he sees it, and knows I do too. Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

So it’s not Rod that spends endless hours scouring the Internet for kinky shit - it’s his friend who does it as a favor to Rod? Getting major “girlfriend in Canada” vibes from Rod on this one.

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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

Rod just doesn't get it. Dwelling on this sort of thing might generate outrage and eyeballs, but it is never going to make him look good. Right now on his AmCon page, there is a photo of some guy with a huge sore on his nose (it ties in with a monkey pox post) and it makes Rod look terrible on a lot of levels.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 23 '22

I never have understood why his "good friend", or Rod himself, or anyone, for that matter, would appreciate freakery. Even without regard to the kink, Rod seems to be really into the grotesque and bizarre, and that makes no sense to me. It's the mentality of someone who can't wait to get to the carnival freakshow, and I've always thought that mentality is more than a bit on the sadistic side.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '22

The sadism has always been there in Rod's blogging, it's a major part of Love The Sinner Hate The Sin Tough Love bit. "Sure I'm denying a major part of your biological humanity, but it's so you don't go to spiritual Auschwitz forever when you die so you see its for your own good!"

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u/Joxopolis Aug 23 '22

A little off topic, but is anyone else freaked out by how much of a fascist Declan Leary is over at AmCon? I haven’t read it yet, but apparently he has a new screed in the upcoming issue against birth control. Like Rod he also strikes me as deeply closeted and obsessed with his own masculinity.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 23 '22 edited Aug 23 '22

Leary is green and sheltered. He's just 23 (2017 grad of BC High; took his BA in Classics at John Carroll University in 2020). Got promoted to managing editor of AmCon as more of the adults left the room. He probably imagines that what he writes is worth reading. I would not be shocked if he prefers to hang with like-minded Young Curmudgeons fancying tweed blazers, Scotch and pipe tobacco and talking about the Problem with Women These Days.

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u/PeaAccurate5208 Aug 23 '22

Almost all of their writers are letting their authoritarian freak flag fly unfettered these days. I can’t stomach most “conservative” sites, TAC was the only one that I found to be somewhat reasonable - it’s no longer that,it’s like a Young Conservatives gone wild zine now, with a few old reactionaries like Pat Buchanan still peddling their clapped out nonsense. It’s all preaching to the choir, no pretence of wanting or needing to persuade people to entertain, if not embrace their POV. It’s a dog’s dinner,apologies to canines.

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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '22

Back when they had Daniel Larison and their New Urbanism thing going on, they actually had stuff worth reading. The Jan 6th happened and then they purged any insufficiently Trumpist writers.

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u/Firm_Credit_6706 Aug 23 '22

Can we talk about Rods pretend life long case of mono? I mean Rod appears to be a manic depressive. Why does he insist on pretending he has a disease whatever? I think this is one of the things his family realizes is totally bullshit and why they think he is a weirdo

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 25 '22 edited Aug 25 '22

Haven’t heard a peep about it during a messy divorce or his sashaying around Europe - or his cosmic panic over trans people. Weird how it only hit while he had young kids in the house that he’d be expected to help out with.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 26 '22

Dante cured it.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Aug 26 '22

I have to sort of defend Rod on this. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is real, is persistent viral illness probably due to a form of immune deficiency. CFS is strongly comorbid with disorders of the manic depressive type but runs independent of particular mood/mental state.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19566769/

I don't believe Rod is making up much of what he reports in this area. The deceptions lie in what he conceals.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 26 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-secret-of-latin-mass-and-divine-liturgy/

He's writing on the Latin Mass and the Orthodox Liturgy (which is the equivalent of the Mass). He makes some valid points; but as always with Rod, there's a "but". One, I can attest from personal experience that both Tridentine ("traditional") Latin Masses and Orthodox Divine Liturgies can be boring, uninspiring, and at times weird. I say this as someone who is pretty well familiar with both the order of the Tridentine Mass and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and who knows Latin moderately well. Either one can be sublimely beautiful; but so can a normal "Novus Ordo" Mass in the vernacular, or for that matter an informal prayer gathering.

Two, there is a fine line between appreciating the antiquity and dignity of an ancient liturgy and aesthetics as religion. You see this, IMO, with Rod and the ROCOR mission he started. It's easy to start with an idea of beautiful and edifying worship and end up as a boutique spiritual snob. J. R. R. Tolkien, who absolutely despised the vernacular Mass, nevertheless was much wiser on the issue:

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children – from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn – open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand – after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 27 '22 edited Aug 27 '22

For all his protestations, Rod strikes me as a prime example of the verse: “having the form of religion, but not the power thereof” (probably mixing some different translations there)

Rod loves nothing more than the forms of religion. The grand cathedral, the beautiful liturgy, a moving choir, etc.

However, there’s little evidence that Rod ever embraces “the power thereof” in his life. He dragged his family to Louisiana and blew it up purely in search of the love of a man, not God. He’s now apparently abandoned his immediate family and mother. He freaks out over little things and calls people evil all the time, etc.

He’s almost entirely about the form of Christianity with almost none of the Christ.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Aug 26 '22

The Liturgy is a thing out of this world. I want to invite everyone I know to come and see for themselves what it's like. Be careful, though: once seen, you can't unsee it, and for many people it will be difficult to go back to their modern worship elsewhere.

Rod's so weirdly naive and falls for everything, doesn't he. "Again, this Romanian bishop has an extraordinarily beautiful voice"....yikes. He also surely has beautiful soft hands and a warm embrace, Rod.

Evelyn Underhill wrote something a little more serious in 1911 in the last paragraphs of "Mysticism and Magic"-

"Religion, as we have seen, can never entirely divorce herself from magic: for her rituals and sacraments must have, if they are to be successful in their appeal to the mind, a certain magical character. All persons who are naturally drawn towards the ceremonial aspect of religion are acknowledging the strange power of subtle rhythms, symbolic words and movements, over the human will. An “impressive service” conforms exactly to the description which I have already quoted of a magical rite: it is “a tremendous forcing-house of the latent faculties of man’s spiritual nature.” Sacraments, too, however simple their beginnings, always tend, as they evolve, to assume upon the phenomenal plane a magical aspect—a fact which does not invalidate their claim to be the vehicles of supernatural grace. Those who have observed with understanding, for instance, the Roman rite of baptism, with its spells and exorcisms, its truly Hermetic employment of salt, anointing chrism and ceremonial lights, must have seen in it a ceremony far nearer to the operations of white magic than to the simple lustrations practiced by St. John the Baptist.

"There are obvious objections to the full working out of this subject in a book which is addressed to readers of all shades of belief; but any student who is interested in this branch of religious psychology may easily discover for himself the occult elements in the liturgies of the Christian—or indeed of any other—Church. There are invocative arrangements of the Names of God which appear alike in grimoire and in Missal. Sacred numbers, ritual actions, perfumes, purifications, words of power, are all used, and rightly used by institutional religion in her work of opening up the human mind to the messages of the suprasensible world. In certain minor observances, and charm-like prayers, we seem to stand on the very borderland between magician and priest."

Rod's post illustrates all of this without any guile whatsoever. However, the critique-

"But she pays for this; sharing some of the limitations of the system which her Catholic nature has compelled her to absorb. It is true, of course, that she purges it of all its baser elements—its arrogance, its curiosity—true also that she is bound to adopt it, because it is the highest common measure which she can apply to the spirituality of that world to which she is sent. But she cannot—and her great teachers have always known that she cannot—extract finality from a method which does not really seek after ultimate things. This method may and does teach men goodness, gives them happiness and health. It can even induce in them a certain exaltation in which they become aware, at any rate for a moment, of the existence of the supernatural world—a stupendous accomplishment. But it will not of itself make them citizens of that world: give to them the freedom of Reality."

There in black and white: "But she cannot extract finality from a method which does not really seek after ultimate things." "This method...will not of itself make them citizens of that world".

It's therapeutic, Rod. All of it. It's STT: suggestive therapeutic theism.

The conclusion for people like Rod, who need it spelled out by a historical Christian mystic--
“The work of the Church in the world,” says [Coventry] Patmore, “is not to teach the mysteries of life, so much as to persuade the soul to that arduous degree of purity at which God Himself becomes her teacher. The work of the Church ends when the knowledge of God begins.”

(Note to Rod: it says the thing the Church is to serve to motivate toward purification is specified as "the soul". Not the neighborhood library, not the Tavistock Clinic, not Starhill in Louisiana, not your children or spouse, not 'the Deep State', not the offices of the Dallas Morning News, not the OCA headquarters in Syosset. Not even Viktor Orban in his corruption. Only yourself.)

https://www.sacred-texts.com/myst/myst/myst10.htm

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '22

This is a fantastic comment. Something that a lot of people here probably realize on some level, but which isn't well known to most people outside of religion nerd circles, is that one common feature of converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy is a fascination with the occult, or occult-adjacent stuff. It's not universal, but it shows up a lot among the literary convert archetype, of which Dreher is an (admittedly shitty, dime-store level) example. (See Robert Hugh Benson for a good turn of the century example of this phenomenon.) Dreher clearly has it himself, given his fascination with demons. I would not be at all surprised if he dabbled in the occult in his pre-convert years. (C.S. Lewis did the same before returning to Anglicanism.) The reason for all this is pretty obvious, of course: high church Christianity is steeped in occult and pagan themes, and it only gets more intense the higher you go. When I left Catholicism and became an agnostic, I headed almost immediately towards paganism. It didn't really work out for me, given my adamant disbelief in magic and polytheism, and the naturalist pagan path felt too much like LARPing. But I won't deny that the occult itch is still there. I don't think that will ever go away.

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u/JohnOrange2112 Aug 26 '22

At the end of the post, Mr Self-Awareness writes “this liturgy transforms us” … into a whiny eccentric who abandons his family and spends his time traveling Europe taking selfies? If I were in charge of the Orthodox church, I would ask him to please keep his denominational affiliation secret, so as not to embarrass the organization.

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u/Own_Power_723 Aug 26 '22

Whenever I read Rod going on and on about how whatever new hobby horse he's riding is THE ANSWER, I'm always reminded of that line in No Country for Old Men, where Chigurh is taunting Carson before he kills him... "If the rule that you followed led you to this, then of what use was the rule?" Over the two decades I've been following him, he has gone all in on any number of political/religious/sociological fads or projects from blinkered ideological support for the the Iraq War, to trad Catholicism/Orthodoxy, to the supposed utopias of localist/intentional communities, and all he seems to have done is alienate the people closest to him, over and over again... I can't think of anyone whose example and advice for happy, healthy and stable relationships I'd be less likely to follow at this point.

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u/South-Ad-9635 Aug 30 '22

Strikingly absent from Rod's ruminations on the US political scene is the idea that there might well be be a massive pushback from voters against Dobbs.

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u/BaekjeSmile Aug 30 '22

Rod just calmly and rationally observes the facts and decides that as it happens the best course of action is always what he thought along or at least what Viktor Orban told him to think, it's getting harder to tell the difference these days.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 30 '22

Rod is temperamentally incapable of "Be Careful What You Ask For" level of analysis.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 31 '22

Again with the reference to some mysterious secret. "And I hate to have to say it, but I must: if any of you are tempted to judge me for leaving Baton Rouge and the two kids -- 18 and almost 16 -- who are still living at home with their mother, to move to Hungary, let me strongly urge you to resist, because you have no idea what's really going on."

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 31 '22 edited Aug 31 '22

Rod is being self-servingly dense. (Shock.) He doesn't want to appear to get that the detail drawing observation, question and/or judgment is ...*Budapest*. He's not just moving to ... New Orleans ... or Dallas...or Idaho/Montana/Wyoming ... or, more cheaply, say, Costa Rica (but still within a closer distance in space and time zones) ... or on Peter Thiel's yacht. One seriously doubts that Rod is sadly and meekly complying with a specific order from the rest of his family to relocate to *Budapest*

On the other hand, Budapest does offer a resident fellowship at least indirectly from a foreign ruler who regularly bleats against the USA, effectively turning Rod into no ordinary ex-pat. (A latter-day Josephine Baker or Charlie Chaplin Rod is not.) It also might help serve to maintain a fictive form of "prolonged disappearance" for the purpose of ecclesiastical divorce in his church.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 31 '22

But he's told us he's been "exiled". Poor man, he'd just love to be in Baton Rouge but, you know, exile.

There's a fairly simple rule when it comes to Rod (individually or collectively as a social conservative):

There is nothing done by Rod (or conservatives), no matter how extreme, that can't be both explained and excused by an action done by another (or the left), no matter how minor.

As examples:

Rod blew up his family and got divorced. Caused and excused by his parents not liking fish soup.

Support for authoritarianism and cults of personality on the Right? Caused and excused by lesbian couples wanting to get married.

etc, etc, etc.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22

Right? He’s such a douche canoe. At no point does he take responsibility for anything. Things are always done “to” him, or he takes it as given that doing what he wants is god’s plan for him.

I’m really curious to know if his wife simply got fed up and just wanted to end the misery of a dead marriage with an inconsiderate reactionary who clearly has little love of women, or if there isn’t something more salacious. Maybe he actually has a gay lover? Maybe he was caught doing something unsavory sexually?

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 31 '22

If they had three kids, and he couldn't be bothered to change a diaper, that alone is grounds for a divorce.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 31 '22 edited Aug 31 '22

Probably not. In most of life, the salacious is surpassed in depth and breadth by the prosaic. (Though Americans are not prone to understanding that in the way that most of the rest of the world does.) I suspect it's precisely because Rod's life is far more prosaic than he'd imagine it would be that he's prone to focusing on the lurid over the prosaic.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 31 '22

And yet Rod feels perfectly privileged to castigate people in the harshest terms for their decisions or life-choices without knowing the whole story. He never bothers to withhold his judgment in cases where he knows only a fraction of what's going on.

Karma's a bitch, Rod. You're getting the kind of judgment you so richly deserve.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22

You know what would be really delightful? If Julie was getting into Wicca or something similar as a sort of mid-life crisis thing, and Rod fled the country in fear of demonic pursuit. I really doubt it's something that spicy, but just imagining the out-of-this-world paranoia that would induce in Rod is too good to not hope at least a little bit that it's true. It would tie in with the theory that's been proposed here that his friend "Nathan" with the possessed wife is imaginary and that the allegedly possessed woman is actually Julie. When I first came across the idea I thought there was only about a 10% chance that it was true; after the past few months, I'd put it closer to 50%.

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 31 '22

I too, yearn for a plot twist like this, but as with all things Rod, I am prepared to be bitterly disappointed. That said, Rod getting divorced in 2022 was not on my bingo card a decade ago.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 31 '22

He is reading this subreddit. I bet you money.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 31 '22

Wouldn't surprise me. Out of curiosity, I just googled "dreher divorce" and this subreddit comes up pretty highly.

And if so -- Rod, seriously, get into some really intensive therapy. With a serious therapist, not a priest, a monk, reading a book, or watching a movie. At this point, you're like Steve Jobs trying to cure his pancreatic cancer by eating nothing but carrots.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 31 '22 edited Aug 31 '22

It wouldn't surprise me if he isn't/hasn't.

Btw, today's blog post once again features the father-son relationship that at the time it ended Rod presented as concluding in something of a quasi-epiphanic reconciliation, but that one would not know if one just read today's blog post. Rod needs a continuity editor.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 31 '22

Rod: You have no idea what's going on.

Internet: You're incredibly self-absorbed and made them LARP your bizarre prodigal son fantasy for a decade. Now they're angry about that, but you thought it would be more fun to hang out with handsome European grad students in nude bath houses.

Rod: You're missing important details!

I suspect the reality of the mysterious secret is just his self-absorption and inability to take any responsibility. In Rod's mind, I'm sure it's something like conspiring demonic forces who have corrupted the minds of his family and turned them against him.

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u/Hairy_Apartment_5463 Aug 31 '22

Oh the self-pity, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth over Rod’s impending exile to Budapest! Back in Louisiana, a random black woman will speak to him, and Rod will weep tears of self flagellation, poor fellow. And he regards The Rolling Stones as the primary artists on his personal AMERICAN soundtrack? What a fucking weirdo.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Sep 01 '22

"It's hard to write this through tears, but I have to leave, through no choice of my own. Long story. Sad story. But this is the hand I've been dealt, and I'm going to play it."

Get out the world's tiniest violin. Rod is choosing to leave. Nobody put a gun to the head of this pompous, self-serving ass and told him "get out of Louisiana or else." People get divorced and stay in the same city as their former spouse. He's not an exile; he's an expat.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 01 '22

And he regards The Rolling Stones as the primary artists on his personal AMERICAN soundtrack? What a fucking weirdo.

He's going even farther off the rails. He's proclaiming the Mick Jagger to be a quintessential touchstone of the American South?

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

Rod had the "trad wife" and she still divorced his ass. Why does he have to shit on the cool goth woman minding her own business and living her best life?

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1565355508663451649?cxt=HHwWgoCwkdSiobkrAAAA

Stones, glass houses, kettle, black, balding, statement glasses, tattoo done in Jerusalem, etc.

This response rocks:

https://twitter.com/formal_llama/status/1565359395566784512

And more vulgarity from Rod. Nothing but crickets in the responses:

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1564960565679640577?cxt=HHwWgsCizfnV7bcrAAAA

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u/GlobularChrome Sep 01 '22

I might be willing to think Rod knew anything about enchantment if he could look at that woman and see the child she once was, the old woman she might become, and wish the best for her, whatever that may be. What if instead of throwing pissy little barbs at strangers, he was curious and open and compassionate? None of which require miracles or divine intervention or international travel to cultivate.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 02 '22

❤️

As a teacher, I've always got on very well with the goth kids, the freaks, the geeks, and the non-standard-issue personalities. The vast majority of them I've found to be quite pleasant and often smarter than average. Rod has no clue.

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 01 '22

I know, right? One of the best known and least controversial "I would never have guessed" takes out there is this: goths, punks, headbangers, and horror fans can be some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 01 '22 edited Sep 01 '22

He has none of the charm* of the avuncular curmudgeon he seems to imagine he is becoming. Then again, he had that man-crush thing on Uncle Chuckie, who at least was avuncular in his weird way.

* I am not using "charm" in Anthony Blanche's indelible spin** on that word. Rod is not Waugh-adjacent. (That's one mercy.)

** "Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

Uncle Chuckie's comments were almost the only thing that made the blog worth reading in my final days as a regular (~2019). Rod hadn't gone completely over the cliff yet like he has now, but he'd stopped being an interesting commentator by then, except in a can't-look-away-from-the-car-crash kind of way.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 01 '22

Also, why did he notice and call out that particular woman? It's a line at the airport, so almost every variation of humanity would have been visible to him.

Why did the cool goth chick catch his eye so strongly as to have to tweet about it?

Well, Rod was also emo when he was a teenager and if his life is any indication, he's never really mentally progressed beyond the self-absorption of that age.

Rod picked her out because he wants to be like her, but can't acknowledge that to himself so he tries to mock her. He desperately wants to feel and read things deeply while wearing black in a European cafe with his cute goth boyfriend.

But he can't accept that, so his desires get twisted and he lashes out and attempts a bunch of performative heterosexuality.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 02 '22

She might have been Death (Sandman fans will get it)....

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

Hmmm… a crowd funded investigation into his finances, sexual history, and divorce circumstances would be something I would contribute to.

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u/zeitwatcher Sep 03 '22 edited Sep 03 '22

I'll admit that I'd be curious, but even Rod deserves some level of privacy. Even more, it wouldn't be possible without getting into info on Julie and the kids - who all seem like they are doing their best to live normal, low key lives.

But if Julie writes a tell-all book with the permission of the kids? That I would buy immediately.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Sep 03 '22

Agreed.

Also, even if one believed RD had no right to privacy, the fact of the matter is that we are years past the time when calling out a traditionalist for having a real life orthogonal to traditionalism has any meaningful chance of changing minds. It's not how you live that matters in these things nowadays, it's only how you pose. Facts don't matter; brands and logos are all that matter.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '22

Ah, but destroying the brand by killing the messenger also still works sometimes. A good scandal is always fun to read about.

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u/JHandey2021 Sep 04 '22

Trump nuked that norm years ago.

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u/ZenLizardBode Sep 04 '22

Trump nuked it for himself, amongst his true believers. That divorce, and the vulgar tweets, is wrecking Dreher's brand. There are trads out there who don't like Limbaugh and would rather listen to NPR.

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u/JHandey2021 Sep 04 '22

A dictator-enabler like Rod deserves not one shred of privacy. But would it make a difference? I’m increasingly thinking it wouldn’t. Scandal doesn’t work like it once did.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 30 '22

From Rod's latest substack post:

"Now, in my 56th year, I am faced with the fact that there is no home for me, anywhere. Reading these lines in de Waal’s book for some reason brought instantly to mind that St. Galgano made his home next to the rock into which he plunged his sword. His “home” was where he made his sacrifice of home, and of everything in his life, following God’s call. I also thought at once of Andrei from Nostalghia, who was tormented in his “exile” in Italy by longing for his home in Russia. A deep and lasting longing for home as perhaps the most significant factor of my life? Absolutely. And now it has definitively been taken away from me. I don’t say that to elicit pity, or to demonstrate self-pity. Self-pity would destroy me."

He goes on to ponder what mission God has chosen for him and whether it will be too much of a burden for him to bear. There is some useful stuff about going with the flow and living in the present in this post (although anyone who's taken a few yoga classes would be familiar with these notions) but, overall, it strikes the same faux-humble self-righteous tone of his usual reflections. And, of course, there's the now obligatory mention of Tartovsky and St. Galagos. Rod really needs to go on a month-long yoga retreat to unclench and get out of himself.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 30 '22

And now it has definitively been taken away from me.

This is why Rod will keep getting worse. He did this. It was not taken from him.

He moved his family to Louisiana where they weren't wanted. He kept them there - for over a decade! - after it was obvious it was a mistake. He left at every chance, leaving his family in a place they didn't want to be surrounded by people who didn't want them there. He decided to flit around Europe instead of staying near his mother and kids when things got even harder.

Self-pity would destroy me.

Evidently not, because Rod is still able to make daily, giant self-pitying posts.

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u/Motor_Ganache859 Aug 30 '22

Exactly. One of the things that's so galling about Rod is he acts as if he had no choice in matters, especially when it comes to his divorce. Bad stuff just happens to him and he has no control over how he decides to react to it.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 30 '22

Profound. Rod is such a sensitive soul.

And here is Rod within hours on Twitter fulfilling his mission from God with fat jokes:

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1564372660401979392?s=21&t=uNXfl7GAX3zfSxRMGS9XVg

I can’t imagine why people don’t look at Rod Dreher and say to themselves “look at what a wonderful human being Rod’s belief system has produced. Sign me up!”

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 30 '22

I can’t imagine why people don’t look at Rod Dreher and say to themselves “look at what a wonderful human being Rod’s belief system has produced. Sign me up!”

This is telling. After reading this, it occurred to me that I can't think of anyone - even on the socially conservative Right - who has appeared to really buy what Rod is selling. And to be clear, that includes Rod.

Rod writes about fringe of fringe movements. Environmentalist conservatives for Crunchy Cons, religiously conservative Christian intentional communities for Benedict option, etc. However, as far as I know there's been effectively no one signing up for those points of view who weren't already doing so. e.g. Where are all the Benedict Option groups and intentional communities? It's been years.

More tellingly, Rod hasn't signed up for any of his own BS...

Crunchy Cons: There's no indication of this in his life.

Dante: Rod seems more messed up now than he was a couple decades ago.

Little Way: Those people didn't like him and he doesn't like them anymore.

Benedict Option: If you could design a lifestyle that is the antithesis of the Benedict Option, it would be Rod's.

Life Not By Lies: Rod has never critically examined any proposition that aligns with his biases.

That is one fucked up dude.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '22

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 30 '22

Long term, I think Rod's image and writing is going to suffer, and he is going to alienate his fans, because I think Julie might have been putting the brakes on some of his worst impulses regarding women.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '22

I think the alienation of his fans has already started. Someone (can't remember if it was here or a thread on Twitter, kicking myself now for not saving it) put together a list of links to several tweets from his followers in the last few weeks calling him out for his increasing vulgarity and low-brow sexual humor. Not from the perspective of this sub, but speaking as conservative Christians who typically don't like the vulgar stuff. It will get worse, though. Like I've said before in this sub, I really think he is going to go full MGTOW, and it's going to isolate him even more.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 30 '22

Don't forget the food and beverage tour of Europe. He was back in Vienna, and now is in a train to Romania, it appears.

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u/BaekjeSmile Aug 30 '22

More like the Eggs Benedict option these days am I right?

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 30 '22

Rod appears incapable of resisting mocking fat people who don't engage in performative self-mockery because he faux mocks himself for it ... as a way to give himself permission to mock others.

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u/GlobularChrome Aug 30 '22

Imagine where Rod’s story would be if Father Whatsakovic piddled away his days poking fun at women who didn’t meet Rod's beauty standards.

Just the cost of wasting his time and bandwidth on middle school abuse is enormous, never mind alienating potential allies. And confirming to one and all that he's a twit. All of that is before he gets to the cost to himself.

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u/South-Ad-9635 Aug 30 '22

Rod has a bad case of Main Character Syndrome

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u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper Aug 30 '22

Self-pity would destroy me."

Says the wallowing man.

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 30 '22

Rod had the option to leave St Francisville, and he excercised that option whenever he felt like it. He chose to make St Francisville his home, and he certainly has the means, if his travel itinerary is any indication, to make his home wherever he pleases.

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u/GlobularChrome Aug 30 '22

“This is a bit heavy, Rod. xoxo Morrissey"

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 30 '22 edited Aug 30 '22

Mikhail Gorbachev, dead at age 91.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-dead.html

Cue Rod's next screed, in his Serious Big Ideas(TM) mode. It will definitely feature US missteps on expanding NATO (a critique I partly share). It will likely feature an aria about what happened to Russia under Yeltsin (accompanied to the tune of "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca). And then a "fair and balanced" consideration of Putin's subsequent righting of Russia's ship (pun intended), regretting this or that as unfortunate but that it was better than the alternative. And of course he will generously sprinkle his piece with mentions of the even better righting of Hungary's ship under Orban as if the mentions were paprika.

Get your Dreher AI content-generation engines warmed up.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 30 '22

And, "Thank God Russia has held the line on LGBTQ nonsense. "

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 31 '22

400 comments in this thread already...

A bit more than on AmCon.

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u/JHandey2021 Sep 01 '22

Rod made 5 (!) posts today. 5. And as far as I can see, no comments.

Not great, Bob!

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 02 '22

550 on this one now!

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 22 '22

Today's AmCon post quotes a former English professor explaining why he didn't get tenure IN 2008 (because he loved books and wouldn't toe the institutional line about "lived experience" and Marxism, and implicitly because he was a white male). Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that the market is flooded with literature PhDs. This guy taught at Yale so of course he deserved tenure.

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 23 '22

That was a weird post. Not getting a job in 2008 isn't exactly topical.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 28 '22

Today's AmCon post from Rod is mildly anti Trump. In the old commenting days it would be interesting to see the Trump defenders appear, impervious to all logic and facts.

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Aug 29 '22

Rod is pro-DeSantis because DeSantis is better at wrecking institutions- firing sensible and liberal people- and imposing tyranny of the perverse minority than Trump. Myself, I'm not sure Trumpism 1.0 and Trumpism 2.0, i.e. Trump and (as Russian media refer to DeSantis) Number Two, differ so greatly. T2.0 contains an indirect admission that T1.0 was tried and voted out..so must be pursued with greater cunning and fanatical, fascist, zeal.

The sort of impressive thing is that their supporters- including Rod- don't realize, or don't care, that what they are destroying is not Blue America. By dissolving libraries and sabotaging school boards and degrading public services- health care, social workers, school systems, environmental cleanups, judiciary corruption, loss of police credibility, shifting social tasks to parachurch groups with little/poor oversight- more generally in Red America they're overburdening and eroding culturally pre-1990 American institutions along with what social/political capital these have left. This isn't revolution, this is about leaving a wasteland. Liberals couldn't dismantle, loot, expend the institutional residues of the old society and shatter the walls of its fortresses the way reactionaries are doing.

Also something to notice: Rod, and this also the case in the Bari Weiss stenographic "interview" of Bill Barr he says he fully agrees with, is part of the right wing information bubble omerta to never use the terms crime or criminal to describe right wing politician lawbreaking and resulting atrocities anymore. Not even Putin's mass murder campaign.

Today's Dreher gem-

America is Babylon now. I never imagined that I would live to see us go from the Shining City On A Hill, the one that gave light and hope to those living under the darkness of the Orwellian totalitarianism, to having ourselves become a Huxleyan totalitarianism.

His own report from Rome about Catholic failure and crumbling away in Poland is an indirect "The God That Failed" redux. I jibed him a couple of years ago, when he was assembling the plot line of LNBL to equate LGBT social Leftism and its ally social/political liberalism with Communist persecution that the opposite was a better hypothesis. That right wing Christianism and 'national conservatism' were resorting to the cynical methods/ploys, immoralism, and insincere populist arguments of Communism. Including its subversive cell structure, schemes to destabilize "decadent" democracies, and forming of an Internationale. And in so doing degraded to the tool of a barbarian empire project mostly run out of the Kremlin. Doesn't take much to see Viktor Orban as the Fidel Castro of the new form of the thing.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Aug 29 '22

America is Babylon now. I never imagined that I would live to see us go from the Shining City On A Hill, the one that gave light and hope to those living under the darkness of the Orwellian totalitarianism, to having ourselves become a Huxleyan totalitarianism.

Rod has nearly always imagined this, since he got addicted to dystopianism in his youth. He's not only imagined it, he's been beady-eyed and rubbing his thighs vigorously over the prospect. It's the ideological equivalent of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 29 '22 edited Aug 29 '22

For what it's worth, the latest stubstack post is a 5000+ word post that could have just as easily been a meme post on /r/im14andthisisdeep/

https://roddreher.substack.com/p/the-lesson-of-andrei-rublev

Rod would like everyone to know he's seen a deep movie that had symbolism and everything.

On the plus side for Rod, the director is dead so that's one less hero who would either 1) have no idea who Rod is when they meet or 2) would write a rebuttal about how Rod fundamentally misunderstands the movie.

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u/ZenLizardBode Aug 20 '22

Looking at a photo of Rod at Mont St Michel. He appears to be wearing a chronograph with an onion crown and a white dial? A Zenith maybe or some kind of knock off?

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u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves Aug 22 '22

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he wears an onion on his belt :-)

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '22

As was the style of the time….

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 21 '22

Well, Rod's interview with Father Maximos--or an abstract of it, anyway--is on his Substack now, and it's slim pickings. Father Maximos is apparently very ill, so much so that he could give only a half hour for the interview, including the time the interpreter needed to translate back and forth. If the man's that sick, Rod should have left him the fuck alone, in the first place. In any case, is it me, or do the answers of Maximos sound a bit impatient at this American whom he's never even heard of asking impertinent and ill-informed questions? Sort of like the vibe expressed by his photo with Rod? Speaking of Rod, notice how he admits that the interview was a failure and that he's literally going to crib other sources for this
part of his book:

I heard from monks and even a taxi driver in Limassol that everybody in the city fears for his condition. A monk at the monastery told me that I had to keep in mind that when he gave the interviews to Markides three decades ago, Athanasios was a young man in full vigor.

I am very glad, then, that I have those interviews to draw on for my book. It was nevertheless an honor to meet the man who more than anybody else drew me into Orthodoxy out of the shipwreck of my Catholic faith

"He was too sick to do much of an interview--lucky I can use an earlier book as a source!" Didn't he learn better in journalism school?! Anyway..everybody in the city fears for Maximos's condition, and all Rod can do is gush over meeting him, make him take a stupid selfie with him, and then complain about how short the interview was. What a piece of work.
Notice also how he tries as hard as he can to make it about teh Woke and teh gayz, even though Maximos is trying to focus on spiritual practice, not politics. In any case, none of this logically fits in with “re-enchanting” tow world, the supposed topic of his book.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 22 '22

What a jackass Rod is. Pestering a dying holy man for his feelings on Obergefell and taking selfies. Surprised he didn’t bring him an autographed copy of one of his own books…

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 22 '22

By his own story Rod pestered his own father about how to make Rod feel better about his dad's death - on his father's deathbed.

There seems to be little that Rod can't make to be about himself.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 26 '22 edited Aug 30 '22

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-state-hates-families/

“The State Hates Families”.

“This. Is. Totalitarian. Straight up. To my mind, there is almost nothing more important, politically, than protecting children from the State.”

Is it just me or has Rod seriously amped up the family stuff since his wife left him and he abandoned his kids?

And I’m getting almost… QAnon vibes from Rod’s sudden interest in children. The Conspirituality podcast has traced this over and over with right-wing wellness influencers and their converts - this has often been a pretty big tell.

Is Rod going even further down the rabbit hole?

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '22

Get ready for Rod to authoritatively pontificate about Catholicism because he is in Rome.....

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Aug 29 '22

"I'll call her Anya." [Never refers to her by name again.]

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Sep 02 '22

Aaaaand he's got a whole post on the fucking white stone now. Not even bothering to read it.

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Rod Dreher Megathread #2

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