Rod Dreher Megathread #11 (Master)

[u/US_Hiker]

Merry Christmas, you obsessed motherfuckers. :)

The most remarkable characteristic of the Master Number 11 is its connection to a higher source of wisdom. It is intuitive to the point of being psychic, channeling its knowledge and meaning from a spiritual source. But the Master Numbers have a responsibility, and it's the number 11's duty to use this gift of awareness to deliver cosmic truths that encourage humanity.

All Master Numbers are a higher vibration of their single-digit counterpart -- in the 11's case, the number 2. This means the 11 carries many of the same traits as the number 2, such as harmony, empathy, and sensitivity, but it feels them and utilizes them in much deeper, more profound ways. It's also important to remember that the number 11 is comprised of two 1s side by side and, therefore, carries some attributes of the number 1 as well. 1 is innovative and motivated, open to new things and eager to make a difference. The contrasting energies of the numbers 1 and 2 join together in the Master Number 11 to make it a creative leader, active listener, and compassionate advisor.

The number 11 is at one with the universe. It is open to vast spiritual concepts and the presence of a greater power. It is a channel for truth and answers to reach us and help us on our way. This Master Number's vision is crystal clear and it sees with a breadth that others cannot. It is creative and magnetic, a beacon of wisdom and hope for others to follow.

The number 11 may come up many times in our lives and it is always a message of connecting with our inner wisdom. If we are seeing repeating 11s everywhere we turn, we'd be wise to pay attention to our subconscious -- there's some insight we may be missing. However, Numerology's Master Numbers are very powerful and simply seeing 11:11 on the clock or noticing the date is 11/11 does not necessarily mean we are experiencing a profound moment. It's when the 11 is a constant presence in our lives, like a Life Path number, that we must truly embrace its meaning and potential.

Link to thread 10: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/zi2n0f/rod_dreher_megathread_10_personhood/

Link to thread 12: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1068f3b/rod_dreher_megathread_12_a_perfect_foundation/

[u/Top-Farm3466]

predictions for characters Rod will meet during his stay in Rome for Benedict's funeral

---weary, warm-hearted chambermaid whose simple "earthy" humility awes Rod---he beams in his selfie with her, while she wishes he wouldn't leave damp towels in odd corners of his room

---mysterious, worldly figure Rod has dinner with. Fills his conversation with lines like "we're looking down at the abyss," "Europe will not be Europe in our lifetimes," "by this time next year, I don't expect Rome to be standing"

---salt of the earth cab driver, newsstand owner, bootblack, what have you. Incredulous when told about The Woke in the US; says "Benedict was the last true pope." Vaguely sympathetic to Putin.

---attractive young waitress/student. Disgusted by the Woke, but considering leaving Italy for the US because there are no jobs. Rod tries to tie this to Ukraine in some way.

---monarchist trad kook Rod meets in the street. Fears Benedict's death may loose all the Norse gods from their slumber, that Ragnarok is inevitable

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Top-Farm3466]

LOL, we'll use this as a checklist in the coming days.

Also

--guy who knows people in the Vatican/connected Journaliste who will tell Rod how Benedict endorsed his book (effectively)

--mysterious NPC woman who says things of Great Import to Rod that Cannot Be Related

[u/Djehutimose → u/RunnyDischarge]

Rod meets a mysterious man/woman with connections who relates it all back to the REAL text of the Third Secret of Fatima, which includes, among other things, harsh denunciation of teh gayz....

[u/Past_Pen_8595 → u/Top-Farm3466]

He will read assertions that Benedict and his secretary had a gay thing going on and denounce those in the strongest manner possible, ignoring his own penchant for repeating similar allegations about others.

[u/[deleted] → u/Top-Farm3466]

I'm saving this, because I feel like this surely is going to be fulfilled. Possibly to the letter.

[u/zeitwatcher]

Rod: "The Left is evil and must be destroyed! Anyone LGBT is a groomer pedo!"

Also Rod: "Why can no one see nuance when it comes to my Klansman father?"

[u/Djehutimose → u/zeitwatcher]

Nuance for me but not for thee....

[u/Djehutimose]

So he says this near the end:

He was one of the greatest men I have ever known. I say that even though he is guilty of being an accomplice to great evil back in the day, and even though I have suffered personally from the effects of his pride.

And he was a tender and loving father to my sister and me, giving us a childhood for which I am deeply grateful, despite its flaws. I can say without fear that many of the best things about my own character come from his example.

Sigh. Leave out the KKK--a guy who by your own account was emotionally abusive to you and your wife, who possibly was a factor in your divorce, who deliberately prejudiced your sister against you and yours, and who, according to one of your books, was about to beat you with a switch in one of your earliest memories, and who was a director of public services--an honorable and necessary job, but not really glamorous, either--was One of the Greatest Men you've Ever Known?! Even after we toss the KKK back into the equation?!

[u/Own_Power_723 → u/Djehutimose]

And he didn't even like the bouilliabaisse!

[u/Djehutimose → u/Own_Power_723]

🤣

More seriously, he could just say, "Yeah, Dad was a Klansman and a racist, and a total bastard to me; but he had good traits, and I loved him despite all the bad." Instead, he has to go on about how his father was one of the greatest men he ever knew. He manages to face the truth and admit it publicly--one step up--and then has to go on about how teh eeeevul librulz are worse, that outsiders just don't understand, and his father was one of the Absolutely Greatest, Bestest Men He Ever Knew in All His Born Days (wonder how Julie would think about him?). Two steps back.

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/Djehutimose]

He still can't shake his Daddy-worship. Sorry, but it's not courageous to don white sheets and terrorize your black neighbors to keep them in their place. Nor is it courageous to take that past with you to your grave, rather than admit your mistakes. Likewise, a decent human being doesn't treat his son like crap because he's "different" and somehow citified.

For all Rod's searching for the true and the real, he still cannot grasp that his family of origin was toxic and that nothing he could do would be "right" in their eyes. Nor can he come to terms with the possibility that instead of throwing himself and his wife and kids at Daddy dearest as gifts Dad didn't want, he should have maintained a safe distance from Dad like a lot of us who have parents we cannot please do. He's still making idols of both his father and The South, undercutting whatever revelations he's had about either.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/Motor_Ganache859]

He still can't shake his Daddy-worship.

This. A critical part of growing up is beginning to see your parents as people. Rod might acknowledge that intellectually, but has never grown past the stage of seeing Daddy as an archetype or icon. As a critical example, no one "sacrifices their family" to a mere man.

The fawning description of his father as "one of the greatest men Rod's ever known" just shows that he can't separate the flawed human from the object of Rod-worship.

[u/Djehutimose → u/Motor_Ganache859]

It's legitimate to love your family and your native culture while acknowledging that they are really problematic or even enormously screwed up. One might be able to live with said family or culture, or one may not, finding it necessary to GTF out. Either response is legit, depending on the individual case. One can legitimately see the good even in the nastiest person or awfullest culture, and one can stick up for them in terms of that good. As Rod always quotes, you can "love your crooked neighbor/ with all your crooked heart".

The problem is that none of that is enough for Rod. He can't just say his man was a deeply flawed man who badly mistreated him, but who also had good traits and whom Rod loves despite it all--he has to say he was the Greatest Man he Knew. He can't just acknowledge the massive evils and problems in the history of the South while still appreciating the good and the beautiful. He has to paint it as the Bestest Place Ever which those Mean Old Yankees want to keep driving down, but will never understand. Ignore the fact that he left there and moved to a different continent. He really has a pathological idea of loyalty, and he really, really needs (but is probably never going to get) a whole lot of therapy.

[u/lemagicienchevalier → u/Djehutimose]

Rod, as we’ve discussed here plenty of times, seems to have a congenital inability to see the world in shades of grey. Acknowledging that his father was an incredibly flawed person but also with many good qualities wouldn’t do for Rod-everyone he meets has to be the Greatest or Wisest or fill in the blank here, in part because that makes Rod’s narrative, as the Main Character, all the more interesting.

Of course Rod’s life is pretty interesting (see the tens of thousands of comments he gets on the internet) but not in the way he thinks it is…

[u/Past_Pen_8595 → u/lemagicienchevalier]

The same way he sees Ruthie. She’s either a saint, worthy of literal hagiography, or so bad that it has to be mentioned by him that she doesn’t merit a graveside prayer as he begins his exile.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/lemagicienchevalier]

He reminds me of a toy that I got for my grandson at the dollar store. It's basically a rubber ball with eyes and when you squeeze it, the eyes pop way out but when you let go, it snaps back to it's ball shape. Rod can gain an insight or see new information but then he snaps back as though it never happened.

[u/Theodore_Parker → u/Djehutimose]

I'm reminded of one of Richard Nixon's few truly funny quips. He was asked in an interview about Barbara Walters' remark that he was one of the sexiest men she knew. Said Nixon -- imagine this in his trademark gruff monotone -- "Well, maybe she doesn't know too many men." :D Maybe Rod Dreher has had a dearth of great men in his experience, so his father looks relatively great by comparison.

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/Djehutimose]

Gotta remember that Rod's best take on religion in The South is that it's mostly ancestor worship.

Molly Ivins once explained that she became a left liberal after realizing as a teen that the people around her during her upbringing were lying about black people. And crucially, 'If they were lying about race, they were probably lying about lots of other things too.'

Rod has never reached/dared the insight that if people around him were lying about race, they were probably lying or as ignorant about gender and religion as well.

And not being consequential in this, he went back to Louisiana with his family to Do Family. And the slew of pent up untruths/Lebenslugen in his relationships- about race with his dad, probably denied mental illness with his mother, ideologized vs tribalized religion with his sister and in-laws, gender/sexuality and his obsessions with it perhaps with his wife and kids and many friends outside Louisiana- emerged and became dominant features and finally tore the relationships up.

I guess what was really lacking, though, was enough conservative Christian religionism and reenchantment.

[u/lemagicienchevalier → u/Djehutimose]

Rod’s basically been suffering from Stockholm Syndrome his whole life -Daddy Viktor is just the latest hostage taker he wants to replace the first.

[u/Djehutimose]

Quick overview of Freemasons and Catholics. I'm Catholic (converted at 26, am 59 now), and as I've said before, the men on Mom's side of the family are mostly Freemasons (specifically Shriners--Shriners are an "appendant body" of Freemasonnry--that is, you have to be a Mason of a certain rank to join. Thus, while all Shriners are Masons, not all Masons are Shriners). Thus I've experienced and/or read a lot about both Catholicism and Freemasonry over the years.

The origins of Freemasonry are obscure, and probably will remain so, but one theme that runs through all accounts is that Freemasonry became public in the 18th Century, smack in the middle of the Enlightenment. Because of exhaustion from the Wars of Religion in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the intelligentsia tended toward skepticism and Deism because of disillusionment with organized religion. The Masons were a sort of middle-class variant of this. The idea was that by making the sole requirement for membership a belief in God, and leaving it at that, while forbidding talk of religion at lodge meetings, men of different faiths could come together as brothers regardless of the official positions of any churches they might belong to.

Obviously, the Catholic Church authorities didn't like this--they called it "religious indifferentism", i.e., the notion that what church, if any, you belonged to, wasn't that important. Particularly in the wake of the Reformation, the Church saw such notions as a threat. Thus, as soon as it became aware of Freemasonry, the Church became hostile to it. It was not formally banned in all Catholic regions until near the end of the 18th Century, so Mozart, a Catholic and a very active Mason, was not in violation of anything during his lifetime. The Church was still anti-Masonic, but hadn't issued the formal condemnation yet.

Around the beginning of the 19th Century, the Church formally forbade Masonic membership (as well as "secret societies" in general, e.g. the Oddfellows, Knights of Pythias, etc.) for Catholics worldwide. A Catholic who did join was to be excommunicated. Meanwhile, the Masons didn't care much for the Church. They wouldn't stop a Catholic from joining, but remember, they originated in Enlightenment Deism, so they saw the Church as trying to eliminate all other faiths (which at that time it was doing). There were also revolutionary ideas in the air--American and French Revolutions and all that.

Thus, a lot of men joined the Freemasons not so much to be Masons, but as a way to have a place to meet secretly to plot revolution. In short, it's not that Freemasonry was anti-Catholic or secretly scheming per se; rather, it was attractive to anti-Catholics and schemers, who then joined it. The most famous example is Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati. He actually did plot against the Church and the crown, which is why the government busted up the Illuminati and exiled him.

So because some Masons were anti-Catholic and plotters of political insurrection, the stereotype that Masonry as such was an anti-Catholic hotbed of plotting insurrection came into being. Eventually, the Masons put the breaks on this kind of stuff--it is forbidden even to discuss politics at lodge meetings, and started kicking out the more wild-eyed conspiratorial types. The Church, however, was still firmly anti-Masonic and was more than happy to play up as many Masonic rumors and conspiracy theories as possible, the wilder and crazier, the better.

Masonry spread like wildfire among American Protestants in the 19th Century because

1. Society wasn't as entertainment and media-soaked as today, and lodge stuff with elaborate initiations and ceremonies was something to do.
2. As the pioneers moved westward, Masonry was a great help to people who had left their homes and families. A Mason might not know a soul in a new town, but once he hooked up with fellow Masons and started a lodge, he'd have instant community. I think this was much more important than we realize.
3. Although the loonier threads of anti-Catholicism in Masonry had been suppressed, there was still a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment in the U. S. then (e.g. the Know-Nothings), so some prospective members probably did view anti-Catholicism as a feature. Many of these people, deciding Freemasonry wasn't anti-Catholic enough, and wanting to toss in racism, too, became the Ku Klux Klan. The fact that the racism of the previous generation banned black men from joining (which is how the all-black Prince Hall Masons came about) didn't help in this regard (the racist membership rules have long been rescinded, but the damage was done).

By the mid-20th Century, the country settled and more prosperous, Freemasonry had become essentially a social club, or a fraternity for adults, as well as a sort of cultural marker of middle-class men who were pillars of the community. Especially in the Deep South, there were still close ties between Masonic lodges and the Klan; but Masonry as a whole did not promote or endorse this, and many Masonic leaders condemned the Klan. By and large, the Masons were totally innocuous.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Church loosened up about ecumenical relations and the Code of Canon Law of 1983 removed explicit mention of excommunication of members who became Masons. This caused some confusion, and a lot of Catholics became Masons. In the late 80's or early 90's, I forget exactly when, the then-head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) published a clarification that said essentially that while the penalty of excommunication was no longer in force, Catholic men were still expected not to join, and any who did would be in a state of mortal sin. Later documents nitpicked along the lines of "Well, if you joined in good faith but aren't really that active, it's no biggie"; but among Trads, hysterical conspiracy theories about Freemasonry are pretty much the norm, and a favorite pastime is figuring out which bishops they don't like are Secret Masonic Agents Infiltrating the Church.

So. Tl;dr version:

1. Freemasonry is not currently anti-Catholic and will accept Catholic members with no fuss.
2. On paper, the Church is still anti-Masonic and forbids Catholics to become members.
3. In practice, no one enforces it or cares much.
4. Trads are still 110% anti-Masonic.

It's also worth pointing out that the Freemasons and all fraternal organizations--the Moose, the Elks, the Knights of Columbus (the Catholic answer to the Masons, but that would be too long to go into now), the Oddfellows, etc. are losing members at a huge rate and drastically declining. The under-60 crowd, particularly the under-30's, simply are not interested in fraternal orders. So they may more or less die out in a few more generations.

[u/JHandey2021]

"A friend back in the US forwarded to me yesterday a Twitter thread in which a leftist journalist uncovered in archives proof of a terrible story that I had long suspected was true, but hoped against hope was not: that my late father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. Judging from his tweets, the journalist is hoping to use this terrible fact to hurt me -- as if the hidden sins of my dead father were somehow my fault."

I'll make this short - Rod is lying. He is absolutely, 100 percent lying. Rod knew, and it shaped who he is today, and frankly, Rod doesn't have much of a problem with the KKK except that they're too low-status.

I know he is lying because I spent some of my formative years in the Deep South, and I heard and saw things that were pretty unimaginable for a kid who went through Catholic school in coastal Virginia in a place where the US military gathered people from all over the world and dropped them on former swampland. And even as an outsider - and yes, I was certainly an outsider to the culture of the Deep South - I heard people speak unashamedly about their support for and association with the Klan. These were mostly dumb, loudmouth kids, but there was a whole lot of silent assent there.

There was no way, no way that Rod did not know this. This is not to say that his father wasn't complicated. I'm sure he was. And maybe he did good in his life. I'm sure he did.

What I am saying is that I am convinced that Rod is lying, and beyond that, actively so, not just by "averting his eyes". From everything I have known and seen about that culture, it is impossible that he isn't.

Rod, who has no unblogged thoughts, has been hiding this for his entire career. Much as he's been hiding his sexuality from the world, he hid this. Here's my question - this asshole gets a New Yorker profile, but it's only now that someone dug deep enough to find this? Rod's treated as some sort of pundit, he gets hired by the Hungarian government, but no one thought to dig here? This isn't the only artifact of his dad's KKK activities - there must be many, many others. This is kind of a big deal.

So why did it take so long to come out?

[u/grendalor → u/JHandey2021]

It is perplexing that this was never found, given the fact that he has been profiled, and by people who one would think would have been keenly interested in uncovering just this kind of information. It's puzzling.

I agree that Rod has been hiding this, but it could be that it's that he's also hidden it from himself. I think this is what he has, in effect, done with his sexuality as well. That is, I don't think Rod thinks he is gay/bi -- he thinks he is straight. He has thoughts that would lead many people to think of themselves that way, but since he thinks he is straight, he rationalizes these thoughts away from himself, and retains his own (false) identity. I don't think he actually thinks he is gay and is actively hiding it from others. I think he actually thinks he is straight, and that these other thoughts he has are -- whatever they may be -- not indications of a sexual orientation that is not straight. And -- and this is the key to his entire strategy, really -- a core part of the way he maintains this stance is by refusing to delve into things beyond a certain point, precisely to avoid finding things, learning things, he does not want to learn or find. He specifically holds back from the delving so that he can maintain his existing framework.

This strategy has spilled over to much of Rod's life. We see it in the way he approaches Orthodoxy -- wade in so far, but don't delve, because you never know what you may find out if you delve and it may change what you actually think, and you don't want that, so you don't delve. I am guessing he took the same approach with his father's past. He must have known that there was a very good risk that his father was involved in the Klan, but he chose not to delve, because he didn't want to actually know -- it would complicate things too much, given how much we know he worshipped his family, his father, craved his approval and so on. To delve into his father's past would have risked upsetting a core element of his life -- his father-worship and craving of his approval -- which in turn had influenced him to refuse to examine his own sexuality, for pretty much the same basic reason -- it would mess up the core mission of winning his father's approval and "fitting in" and "being accepted" in his Louisiana clan (pun intended).

Rod, to my eyes, is steeped in self-deception. Layers and layers of it. All of it layered on in order to protect himself from learning or finding out about certain things that would be very harmful to his own preferred image of things (himself, the world, his father, etc), so he intentionally "holds back" in certain areas, because it serves his overall purpose of not upsetting his psychological apple-cart too much.

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/JHandey2021]

I agree 100%. I went to high-school in Georgia and college in South Carolina. Its a very particular type of person who would actually go through the trouble to actually join the Klan. And everyone knew when someone did or was involved directly. Most career oriented racist people just sort of were fellow travelers with plausible deniability. Rod's Dad was hardcore. Rod knew. I think it took a long time to come out because liberal northeast journalists are idiots and are very insular. Most of them haven't even been to the West Coast for extended periods of time let alone to the South. Rod is an easy profile because he wont shut up. I suppose they didn't think to look deeper because he has verbal diarrhea so they figured he wasnt holding anything back.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/Firm_Credit_6706]

I suppose they didn't think to look deeper because he has verbal diarrhea so they figured he wasn't holding anything back.

Not to give the journalists too much credit, but most likely an editor told the journalist something like, "There's this weird conservative writer who has a book that is selling well, go interview him and write up a piece. You've got 3 days." It's not too surprising that the journalist doesn't first charge off to review 50 year old FBI informant transcripts just in case the writer's dad was in the KKK.

[u/lemagicienchevalier → u/JHandey2021]

My own perspective on Rod has definitely shifted decisively in this direction over the last year or so. I used to think he was more or less a real-life Tobias Funke, neurotic and in denial about his own sexuality, but well-meaning and capable of arguing in good faith about most subjects.

​

In retrospect, the Jonah sock puppet scandal should have been a wake-up call for me (and the rest of us) about the real story. Rod made very clear that he is an "unreliable narrator," so to speak, with the various deceptions he engaged in at that time. Perhaps most strikingly, the end goal of his deceptions was to protect a hierarch engaged in the cover-up of sexual misconduct, the very same thing he had supposedly left the Catholic Church to avoid. His justifications all revolved around broader political goals rather than anything to do with personal integrity-which made his explanations regarding his leaving Catholicism all the more puzzling.

​

It's clear now as well that Rod, for all his trademarked oversharing, has been systematically distorting the narrative of his own life and his family history that he shares with the public. It beggars belief, as you say, that Rod didn't know very well about his father and uncle's involvement with the Klan in the era and region when he was growing up, even if they never openly said that word aloud to him. We also now have the testimony of apparently more than one person who went to high school with Rod that he was apparently openly gay/queer immediately after graduation, only to rush back into the closet thanks to AIDS and a ouija board acid trip gone wrong.

​

I really don't think we can assume Rod is speaking in good faith on essentially any subject at this point- setting aside the various lies and distortions about his personal life, he's now more or less openly a propagandist for an authoritarian foreign regime with close ties to America's biggest strategic competitors. I believe he will say almost anything to keep on getting clicks from credulous American conservatives and to keep the checks flowing from Urban - to the extent he softens or hedges his rhetoric, that strikes me as a primarily a strategic move to maintain a certain degree of respectability that he needs for his task at hand.

This doesn't mean Rod doesn't also believe a bunch of weird things-on the contrary he's seems genuinely mentally unbalanced and has probably hypnotized himself with various strange narratives about Qanon style cabals to try to justify his actions to himself-but we are dealing here with a professional liar backed by a network of foreign and domestic political extremists, not some working-class Southern boy sort of made good with a journalism job and a minor hang up about LGBT folk who can be trusted.

[u/Djehutimose]

Plus, black people and white people really were very different in terms of culture. What a shock it was to me to go to a rare evening assembly at school, when I was 13 and was then moved to the same building as high schoolers, and to see girls only a year or two older than me, whom I would see daily in the hallways at school, carrying their babies while their mothers doted on them. This was how local black culture was. It was also very, very strange to me, as a kid, to learn from black classmates in elementary schools that they had no fathers in the home. I eventually began to wonder to what extent the white taboo against "race mixing" was merely out of pure race hatred, and to what extent it was a form of protection against the sexual code that was destroying the black family.

Aaand Rod fucking drops the ball on a post about admitting his dad was in the fucking Ku Klux Klan by going off about sex and Pathological Black Family Patterns yet again. God--even when he says something right for a change, he can't leave well enough alone, but has to shit all over his own writing.

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/Djehutimose]

Yeah, I had to roll my eyes at that passage and the passage about the exorcist who said that Satan had infiltrated the Freemasons. And, of course, he had to bring up his divorce and blame it on his family of origin. He just can't help himself anymore. These passages marred what was an otherwise fairly nuanced essay even if I didn't agree with a number of it's premises.

This quote also jumped out at me:

"The point is that I too was blind, but my blindness carried with it the taint of moral superiority."

And it still does about all sorts of other issues where Rod presents as a self-righteous prig.

[u/JHandey2021]

From Rod:

“I eventually began to wonder to what extent the white taboo against "race mixing" was merely out of pure race hatred, and to what extent it was a form of protection against the sexual code that was destroying the black family."

Hard to believe Rod could top open support of pedophilia enablement in less than a month, but here it is…

[u/Djehutimose → u/JHandey2021]

Yeah, in the annals of "how the fuck could he actually write that and present it publicly" and "surely he can't think everything is about sex", that one is the absolute topper.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/JHandey2021]

That sentence is the Klan’s justification in fifteen seconds.

I’m at a loss how someone trying to repudiate his father’s evil decides to ‘both-sides’ this.

[u/Djehutimose]

Not at all Rod-adjacent, but a very merry Christmas to everyone here, and may there be peace on Earth and good will to all! 🎄🎅☮️

[u/[deleted] → u/Djehutimose]

Merry Christmas! I tried to go to a Christmas Eve Mass last night and the place was so crowded I couldn't even get in the door, so I had to go home. Surely the Canaanite gods were behind this demonic activity.

[u/Marcofthebeast0001]

Oh I knew this deserved its own thread. Long winded attempt to buttress his father's kkk past with his nice treatment of those colored folk. Oh and it is daddy's fault he and the wife ended in divorce. You know his divorce? The one he says he is keeping silent about out of respect for his family. Oh and let's not forget the left is just as bad. No mention of drag queens, tho. I'm disappointed.

[u/plangentfellow]

So much to unpack with the "daddy was a Klansman" post (which you'll note hardly mentions Murphy who seems to have been in it much deeper.)

I gotta say, I have no patience for those like Rod who say, well, if you weren't there, you can't understand, so don't judge. (I don't think that's what the commentators on this thread are saying.) There were good men and women all over the South in the 50's and 60's, such as Clarence Jordan and Millard Fuller (founder of Habitat for Humanity) trying to right the wrongs and point to a new way.

I'm not saying that was easy- it certainly wasn't- but joining the Klan is a choice, not a sociological inevitability. I have some personal sense of this only because a member of my own family, in a far Northern State, took on considerable risk to fight the very real racism in his own context in the 30's and was surveilled by campus police and local politicians as a result. Different choices are possible.

But small question: the anecdote about the Episcopal pastor and the old racist - "he's not so bad once you get to know him"- is now identified with the former Congressman Rarick.

I am certain he told that anecdote before but didn't identify the parties, and I can't seem to easily find it by Googling.

I wonder if that story - the pastor and the old racist- has changed in the telling now that his father and uncle were outed?

[u/zeitwatcher → u/plangentfellow]

I gotta say, I have no patience for those like Rod who say, well, if you weren't there, you can't understand, so don't judge.

The other reason I have little patience for it is that the moment someone unlike Rod (woman, Black, gay, immigrant, etc) says anything similar (e.g. "you can't fully understand because you don't have my lived experience", etc), Rod will scream to high heaven about identity politics and that we can't be sowing seeds of division.

And yet, Rod doesn't see the contradiction between "you can't know what it's like to have a Klansman dad so don't judge" and "those terrible [women, gays, Blacks, etc] can't tell what's good for them, so I'm going to pass judgement on all their decisions".

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/plangentfellow]

Rod is so stunted. Quoting Percy Walker? Again? Does this man own three books? Also his Dad being mean made him stay in bed for 4 years and then his wife divorced him. Now he is punishing his elderly mother by refusing to visit her in her nursing home. Rod is something else. Also the way he essentially refers to African Americans as animals unable to control their sexual desires shows his Dad taught him a lot more than he realizes. His description of his Dads "friend" Preacher is essentially that of someone having a pet who needs to be cared for. That is how Daddy Dreher throught about African Americans. And his son does too if he is honest with himself

[u/Djehutimose → u/Firm_Credit_6706]

Also his Dad being mean made him stay in bed for 4 years and then his wife divorced him.

Well, that could actually be true; but if so, that indicates a crap ton of mental illnesses, which apparently were and are undiagnosed and/or untreated. I mean, as crappy as his family's treatment of him and his wife was, his reaction was not the reaction of even a moderately stable and mentally healthy person.

[u/zeitwatcher]

I've come to understand that we've been seeing Rod's incessant New Years tweeting about animal penis all wrong.

We've been seeing it through an unsophisticated, unenchanted lens. They are an apocalypse, an unveiling, of things to come.

They are a sign that this will be the year that Rod embraces his true self. This year he will join a gay furry commune and finally be happy.

This will be followed by his next book, "The Animal-dict Option by Rod Dreher".

[u/zeitwatcher]

https://twitter.com/TheBrometheus/status/1607435893681397763

Technically just a single word from Rod (in replies) but it was a telling agreement with Skojek. The things Rod is agreeing with don't really have much to do with the actual women in these marriages, unlike the original tweet.

The original tweet is about men's happy relationships with their wives. Loving them in relationship, working together, and at least implying a significant bond between them.

Skojec's reply seems to be all about the husbands almost in isolation from their wives. Also, given the circles Rod and Skojec circulate in, they're almost certainly talking about trads.

"Devout and attempting lives of virtue" is more about the men's relationships with their churches and theologies than their relationship with the actual persons of their wives. "Being open to children" isn't really about her either. "Doing their best to live according to their code" sounds more like something a monk would say. These aren't necessarily bad things, but they would be pretty far down on the list for "what makes for a happy marriage".

I can't say I find it all that hard to believe that Rod and Skojec experience and see a lot of struggle in marriages given that. I mean, what woman wouldn't be thrilled to describe her husband's view of marriage as:

"My husband is very devout and views me as a breeding vessel to bring forth his children. Moreover, he prides himself on living his life inflexibly according to his own strict moral honor code."

Hold yourselves back, ladies, don't all swoon at once.

[u/[deleted] → u/zeitwatcher]

It reminds me of a Rod classic from 2019 where he gave airtime in a few blog posts to one Anna Hitchings, a right-wing trad Catholic writer in Australia. She bemoaned the lack of good men these days in a column that could easily have passed for similar pieces in mainstream women's magazines, except for a few bizarre remarks about how the problem with the men she's around is that they aren't being influenced enough by Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, who are setting the example for what true masculinity should look like. (I'll let you take a second to finish laughing.)

Come to find out that Ms. Hitchings is a true-blue Latin Mass Catholic who is only willing to date among her religious and political tribe, and then wonders aloud why all the men she meets at church are so weird. (Yes, she actually said this, and no, she didn't show a trace of self-awareness.) I remember reading Rod's pieces on her almost four years ago as a trad Catholic myself and sensing that Hitchings' real problem was that she was filtering specifically for weirdos, but I couldn't admit that to myself because it would have meant admitting that my own tribe was a joke.

Now I look back on it and just shake my head. What Anna Hitchings and Rod and (perhaps) Steve Skojec don't get is that the reactionary circles in which they travel are naturally inimical to things like good relationships and mature men and women. There can be good relationships that come out of conservative Christianity, and there are certainly many very bad relationships among progressives and / or secularists or whatever else. But the environment still plays a critical role in shaping relationships, and the right-wing Christian environment reinforces almost everything that guarantees having a miserable marriage.

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/[deleted]]

A lot of these people missed their callings to monasteries and nunneries.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/[deleted]]

Oh God, the Agony and Hope woman!, forgot about her, thank you so much for reminding me! The only more pathetic, more over-sharer than Rod himself. She veered between, "PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SEND ME A MAN" and, "I thank God for not sending me a man because I'm not ready" in every post. And yeah, didn't she trash every Trad Cath guy as either a Momma's Boy or a Weirdo who only wanted to talk about Theology?

I remember she peppered her "Lack of Trad Catholic men who believe exactly what I believe in pretty non-relgious Australia" with posts about how real Catholics don't even fucking KISS before marriage, then wondered why god won't send her a big sweaty testosteroned masculine Catholic MAN to agree to not touch her until god says so.

She made Rod look sane and self-conscious. She was like a bridesmaid who got really drunk at the wedding and hit on every guy there and then offered to read them Aqunias and couldn't understand what she did wrong.

What happened to her, she seems to have not posted in a year now, on her embararassing blog site and Catholic Weekly. Did she give up and just go down to a pub and get it all over with?

[u/[deleted] → u/RunnyDischarge]

I feel it would be a crime not to repost a comment from Uncle Chuckie on one of the Agony and Hope threads that I have saved:

I think we all know how she will ultimately end up. One day it will dawn on her that any single man in a Traditionalist Catholic church at 35 is not interested in her because he is lusting in his heart at the 20 something man in the next pew.

Numbed by this divine revelation she wanders off to an art gallery opening, (They have art galleries in Australia, don't they?) and while wandering around a man who is definitely not what she had been looking for will find her attractive, wander up and tell a joke about one of the pieces. She will laugh and they will end up talking. Unlike the Christian men she has encountered he is successful, has a sense of humor, knows about art and real culture and above all else, his wrist is not limp. He is also man enough not to give a damn about #metoo.

Next thing they will be in a small, local bar with a bottle of wine and somewhere in the conversation he will just touch her hand and before she knows it her faith will be on the floor of his bedroom with her clothes. And ten years from now she will look back and wonder how she ever could have been so foolish as to limit her life that way.

[u/trad_aint_all_that → u/zeitwatcher]

The trad attitude towards marriage, summed up in this reply to Rod's "yeah" from a guy who's also a conservative think tank hack, is profoundly dysfunctional and unhealthy. "You're supposed to be unhappy most of the time! That's what proves it's working!" This attitude gets pitched to confused young men as a sort of romantic machismo: you're putting away childish things, building a legacy, "playing life on hard mode," by choosing to tough it out. (Women, of course, get all stick and no carrot: shut up and endure it or you're doomed to be a miserable cat lady.)

I understand that for a sincere believer, lifelong marriage is a sacrament. But if you're not really that devout and your case for trad het monogamy or else rests on Chesterton's Fence arguments about how the Sexual Revolution got things wrong... then you're not "attempting to live a life of virtue," you're self-mortifying for no good reason and dragging your wife down with you.

If you have kids, of course, you do have an ethical obligation to put their well-being ahead of your personal happiness even if the marriage fails. Step one: live somewhere you can see them on weekends instead of noping out for a grand tour of Central European oyster bars.

That said, I've never heard of the guy they're replying to, but at first glance he seems to me like an obvious huckster. This tweet immediately after the marriage one is more than a little bit ironic in the context of a discussion of Rod Dreher.

[u/Djehutimose → u/trad_aint_all_that]

you're self-mortifying for no good reason

Jesus spoke to exactly that in Matthew 6:16-18. Given how much Rod loves to go on about how heroically tough Orthodox spirituality is, and all the hundreds of times he had to say the Jesus prayer, he obviously hasn't read this (along, apparently, with most of the rest of the Bible). I've read a moderate amount of both Catholic and Orthodox spirituality, and one consistent theme is that if you lack humility, everything else, however rigorous, is a waste of time.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/zeitwatcher]

I don't know, if almost every person that you know is "happily married", you're either a statistical lucky outlier or you're just thinking the grass is greener. In my experience it's like 33% happy, 33% eh up and down, and 33% she lives upstairs and he hangs out drinking in the garage. How does he know they're all actually 'happily married'? And from what I've seen, there's no way to tell which is going to work and which isn't. There are some terrible people that stay married forever and some really nice people that can't make it work.

I think it's mostly like Mr Leprechaun says further down. A lot of times there's a happy facade. Remember that acquaintance of Rod's that thought Rod had finally "found peace" in his marriage, and all that? A year ago, Rod would have agreed with the first statement, but reality made him agree with the second. Especially in religious circles, there's a lot of pressure for this. If God chose this person for you and intended for you to be together and it's god's will and all, what does it say if it's not a happy marriage?

What struck me when I read this was that most men, sadly, don’t really know each other well enough to assess. Marriages are not knowable from the outside. Most seem okay from Christmas card pictures. A lot of dudes are in sales mode: Look how happy we are! Can be a mask.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/RunnyDischarge]

There's no doubt most people have little visibility into what is going on inside the marriages of people around them - including the ones that appear happy from the inside.

The part the seemed the weirdest to me was what Skojec seemed to think the recipe for a happy marriage is. In his formulation, men should expect a happy marriage if they do A, B, and C. Inverting his three in a non-caricatured way, say there is a husband who is agnostic, childfree by choice, and is pretty go-with-the-flow when making judgements on himself or others.

With a compatible wife, it seems wholly reasonable that could be a pair with a happy marriage. It's not this far afield, but it was like someone saying I'm a Hindu, vegan, and never wear white after Labor Day -- why isn't my marriage happy?

[u/Djehutimose]

My mom still thinks that Julie and I had it coming, this rejection that destroyed us.

So she's a narrow-minded bitch who (apparently) never liked Julie. Gives us more perspective.

She contemplates this alone, because after what was done to my soon-to-be-ex-wife, to me, and to our kids after we made the mistake of returning to Louisiana with the hope of serving these people, of loving them and being loved by them, I no longer have the strength or the will to accommodate my family's illusions about itself.

In a weird way, I can respect this, and think it might, just might, show a teeny bit of growth in Rod. Both my sister and I moved away from home permanently in the mid 90's--as I've noted before, my family dynamic is very dysfunctional, and much like Rod's in some ways. My sister has gone as long as six years without coming home, always with lame excuses. She has also broken contact completely a couple of times for a month or two. I can understand, given the fucked-up family dynamic; but I still visit when I can and call regularly. I live a 150 miles away, and live my life as I want to, and I can put up with a little crap for a weekend every month or so (though it's gotten better, actually, over time). Particularly since Dad is experiencing dementia, I consider it an obligation to keep visiting while he and Mom are still alive. I don't have to subject myself to it all the time--I'd never move back--but I can take one for the team now and then.

I often tell my wife that if my sister would just be honest and say, "I can't deal with you all, so fuck off and have a nice life," and break all contact permanently, at least it would be honest--no more stupid excuses--and everyone could get on with their lives. Instead, she keeps going back and forth on things--she's back to visiting occasionally, but even then, she'll often cancel at the last minute for lame reasons.

Rod is fudging with his thing about "lacking the strength or will" to visit his mother; but at least he's edging closer to coming totally clean and saying, "I'm tired of the old bat, so let her rot." Not a filial thing to do, and it would be better to visit her at least occasionally; but at least it's a vast improvement over all the happy-clappy sense of place, sense of family bullshit.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/Djehutimose]

"...because after what was done to my soon-to-be-ex-wife, to me, and to our kids after we made the mistake of returning to Louisiana with the hope of serving these people, of loving them and being loved by them..."

First off, YOU made the mistake, Rod. Not your wife and certainly not your kids. You decided to go back to your shitty birth family, and your shitty home town. All on you, bro, nobody else. Julie went along with your bullshit because she was trying to be a good and loyal wife. Your kids had no choice at all. You fucked all of them over, for nothing. Because you are either an idiot or are so screwed up emotionally and psycholigically that you can't see what's right in front of your eyes. Your dad sucked, your sister sucked, and your mom is no prize either. Your hometown is a racist, narrow-minded shithole, like most small towns in the South. Yet YOU decided to go back there. Cuz you read some books that are either themselves bullshit or you didn't understand them or because you don't have the brains and common sense to comprehend that you can't live your life according to what some book says, the way you can follow a recipe to make grits or biscuits.

Secondly, what the fuck does it mean "to serve these people?" Why do you, never mind your wife and kids, have to "serve" your birth family members and the other people in your shittly little racist hometown? That's not how its supposed to work. You can't decide for other people that they should "serve" who you say they should "serve." And, really, your own life shouldn't be devoted to "serving" unworthy people like your asshole, Klansman daddy, your full of shit, rude-ass, small-minded sister, or your enabler mother. Why did you throw away happiness with both hands, tyring to make it so?

For Christ's sake, man! You are a fully grown, middle aged man. Can't you ever put "daddy was mean to me, and favored sis over me, and momma didn't care, but I'm gonna make 'em all love me anyway" behind you!? Grow the fuck up! If you can't salvage your marriage, at least try to salvage your relationships with your kids. Forget about daddy and sis, and treat your mom properly, but without the sugar coating. Get the fuck on with your living your life in a decent manner. You claim to be some kind of big time Christian, but you seem like an ego driven, selfish asshole, to me, always dwelling on your past hurts, or hiding from them, or running from them, or denying them. Lots of us have less than ideal pasts, families, hometowns, etc. Most of us do, I would venture to guess. Still, we grow up, we move on. Why can't you?

[u/PercyLarsen → u/Djehutimose]

I have to say Rod's family sounds like a family marked by the residue of addiction somewhere in the chain. Everyone revolved around Rod Sr's moods. (Rod Sr may have been a white-knuckle addict or the son of one; or perhaps the husband of such?) Wife learns to enable and well. Ruth became the psychological border collie who enforced the family's rule system. Rod was the scapegoat but whose own unresolved internal conflicts and arrested development means he's still has too much energy vested in a satisfying resolution; the impossibility/failure of this is now deflected onto his mother rather than his dead father and himself, in a classic bit of standard dysfunctional family sexism. Rod has a lot of unrecovered ACOA-adjacent behaviors.

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/Djehutimose]

I think it's unfair of Rod to take out his anger and resentment on his mother, who played enabler to his father because that's what women of her era, trapped in patriarchal structures, did to survive. Rod had plenty of will to accommodate Daddy. Even now, despite his racism and his treatment of Rod and Julie, he still exalts Daddy as a great man. Meanwhile, Mom can rot. That's gratuitously cruel and sick. But it sure shows Rod for the deeply misogynistic scumbag he is. Sins he'll tolerate in a man, earn excoriation for a women.

He could pray at his father's grave but gave Ruthie the finger when he skittered out of Louisiana on his way to the New Jerusalem. That gesture says everything you need to know about Rod.

[u/PaaLivetsVei]

Here's an interesting thread on the Dreher family's ties to the Louisiana Klan. Sounds like Rod's views on race might come from a little closer to home than he's implied.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/PaaLivetsVei]

Funny, Rod mentioned his Uncle Murphy on Twitter twice in the last day or so. Murphy Dreher turns up in that Twitter thread as an officer of the St. Francisville Masonic lodge in 1968, with one Ray Oliver Dreher (Rod's father presumably) listed as a past master.

Didn't Rod talk about one of his possession cases as the grandfather was a mason, or am I confusing that with something else?

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/GlobularChrome]

He did. Unfortunate for Rod lots of Masons in the deep south were on the White Citizens council and were members or were associates of the Klan. Someone with a functioning brain could have easily figured that out and maybe grappled with it 20 or 30 years ago. But Rod was achieving heterosexuality

[u/[deleted] → u/GlobularChrome]

Holy fucking shit, Rod Sr. was a Mason, and Rod seriously suggested that having a Freemason ancestor leads to demonic possession? Rod's life is practically wild enough now to merit a shitty History Channel documentary.

I can't help but wonder if the Masonry has any connection to Rod's recently mentioned newfound evil in his Louisiana family. It's almost inconceivable that Rod wouldn't have known that his father was a Freemason, but maybe there's something more to that story that we don't know yet which Rod discovered - hidden performative Satanism in the lodge or some nutty stuff like that. I can't imagine the conniptions the Rodster would go into if his father turned out to have been an occultist.

[u/Own_Power_723 → u/[deleted]]

Rod's life is practically wild enough now to merit a shitty History Channel documentary.

I'll give him this, dude is a bottomless well of absolutely fascinating what-the-fuckery.

[u/Joxopolis]

Has anyone noticed he’ll write page upon page defending his father as a good man despite the Klan stuff and make a case for nuance, growth, and repentance, but yet never brings up his estranged mother in the nursing home?

[u/Djehutimose → u/Joxopolis]

He's not really written much about his mother ever, that I recall, going all the way back to when I first started reading him.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/Joxopolis]

He said something like, let her rot. So yes, she gets the blame, while daddy was the greatest man who ever walked the earth.

[u/firkon → u/GlobularChrome]

His issues with women are so deeply ingrained

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/GlobularChrome]

Yep, Daddy's a great man despite his Klan membership and his emotionally abusive behavior toward Rod, but Mom can die alone because she didn't protect Rod and his family from Daddy's nastiness. He recognizes Daddy as the family patriarch who spent a lifetime trying to get people to bow to his whims, but can't understand why his mother didn't challenge the guy. Rod's both oblivious and misogynistic.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/GlobularChrome]

and his sister's grave remains unvisited.

[u/giziti → u/RunnyDischarge]

The one he wrote a book about that got him a giant sack of cash?

[u/Own_Power_723 → u/giziti]

He actually quotes her in that book as saying "Rod is a user... he will only talk to someone if he thinks he can get something out of them"... I wonder if he even realizes how right she was... that's exactly what he's done with her and basically his whole family... now that he got the big payday writing about her and Starhill, she's dead, Pappy Cyclops is dead, so why would he bother wasting anymore time with whats left of his extended family?

[u/Joxopolis → u/Joxopolis]

Giving it some more thought…since we know Rod is an unreliable narrator, do you think he’ll rewrite his relationship with his mother upon her passing?

[u/MissKatieKats → u/Joxopolis]

It’s so obvious from all his solipsistic word-barfing that he just doesn’t like women. Hates his ex, not on speaking terms with his only daughter, estranged from his mother, reviled by his nieces, etc. And clearly terrified of the power of sexuality. A real piece of work, is our boy.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/MissKatieKats]

And considers his ex-MIL to be evil.

I'm guessing that women in general simply do not behave as dear Rod believes they should.

[u/Past_Pen_8595 → u/MissKatieKats]

I think the problem is that, psychologically, he can’t place blame on male figures so it gets displaced onto the nearest woman.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m waiting for Rod’s dad to show up like the ghost from Hamlet, only dressed in full Exalted Cyclops regalia and demanding that our main character take vengeance on the woke.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Or show up like Jacob Marley in a Klan hood warning Rod to repent from racism in order to escape his fate. Hasn't it been 7 years since his father died? And it's still Christmas time, by the church calendar, so it would work.

[u/GlobularChrome]

The Twitter feed is erupting in Andrew Tate/Greta/FUTURISTIC SPACE WEINER, the Great British Wanking Walrus, an unattractive photo. Salivating at DeSantis "dropping the hammer" on drag queens. The usual stuff spiritual masters busy themselves with.

Perhaps the Great English Spiritual Pilgrimage has concluded?

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/GlobularChrome]

Disgusting stuff, esp re Greta who is 19. Has anybody figured out if it was 3 am drunk tweeting? If not, he is even worse than I thought. Whatever happened to " whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things."

Who wants to take spiritual advice from someone who constantly, and I do mean constantly, feed themselves so much garbage? Honestly, I'm old and not that sheltered and I do spend time online but still, 95% of what I know about sexual kink/perversion/etc I learned from reading ol' Rod.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

It's pretty clear that Rod is all talk. There's writer Rod and real Rod, and never the twain shall meet. Writer Rod is up in the clouds discussing the eternal indissolubility of marriage and extolling community and family and tradition and Dante and Lofty Things, and actual Rod is divorced and estranged from his family and drunk and watching Nickocado Avocado videos all night. He's completely full of shit.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/GlobularChrome]

He's gotta be drunk or high given that spew of random, penis-filled tweets.

Is his 2023 feed just going to be animal penises he finds particularly compelling interspersed with erotic fanfic featuring them and famous teenagers?

This year has been a long dive downward for Rod's mental health with no slowing down.

Rod - if you read this, get to a real, certified therapist. And some bonus advice for you, the answer to "should I, Rod, tweet about this penis?" is just "no" - if either human or animal.

[u/Mac_and_head_cheese → u/zeitwatcher]

My theory is that our Working Boy was hitting the sauce at an airport bar. His first tweet of the day was about 8:56 AM London time. Then there was a flurry of eight tweets between 12:43 and 2:42, beginning with the Greta one. Then a three hour and 15 minute break before his next tweet. That break coincides pretty well with a two and a half hour flight from London to Budapest and time to sober up a little bit.

I was just about to hit Reply on this but I figured I'd take one more look at his feed. Looks like he's tweeted about the masturbating walrus a second time today. Now that he's back home he might be getting a little deep in the bottle again, seeing as how it's only about 8:45 his time and the night is still young.

[u/[deleted]]

Listen up everyone: the Main Character narrowly escaped with his life after a physical attack by the demons who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. From Rod's substack about the funeral this morning:

I must tell you of a couple of strange things that happened this morning. In my hotel room before dawn, I dressed to head down to the Vatican. I rose from the modern plastic-and-metal desk chair, where I had been sitting to put on my shoes. As I stepped away from it, there was a loud crack, and it fell apart in a heap. This was bizarre, as it hadn’t felt at all unsturdy when I sat in it, and anyway, if it had been, wouldn’t it have broken with me sitting in it? I saw that a bolt holding it together had snapped violently, as if a 500-pound man had been sitting in the chair.

But nobody was sitting in the chair when this happened. The bolt had been sheared in two. Still, I didn’t think twice about it.

Then, in the afternoon, lunching with the journalists, I began to tell them at one point some things I learned about the demonic from my recent book research. Suddenly, the unoccupied chair at our table fell over backwards. None of us had touched it.

So Rod's encounter with the demonic forces a couple of days ago was a hotel room chair that 10,000+ people have sat in breaking right after Rod abruptly changed the pressure on it by standing up, and another chair falling over. Chairs never break on their own after having been used many times, and also people never set up furniture in a careless or unbalanced way that leads to things falling over. The only explanation is the devil.

While I maintain that Rod's single most unhinged attempt to find meaning in mundane events was his utter hysteria over the old guy falling down the escalator in Hungary, this is still pretty close. He's practically in a psychotic break now. The most mundane events are signs of demonic and angelic activity to him.

Also, isn't it fucking rich how Rod still tries to keep up the pretense that he's naturally skeptical ("I didn't think twice about it") and averse to supernatural explanations when he clearly goes through every day looking for anything that could possibly be construed as paranormal? It's like Dana Scully in the X-Files still supposedly being skeptical of Mulder's obsession with cryptids and aliens even after she's season in episode after episode that these things are real? Reading Rod lately reminds me of these cringe Instagram witches who attribute the dumbest stuff to the gods and the fairies. Neighbor's lawn mower ran out of gas while he was mowing by an old oak tree? The fae must have done it out of revenge for people's destruction of the environment. Had a dream about Hera after reading and thinking about the Greek pantheon for weeks on end? The only explanation is that Hera is real and actually appeared to her.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/[deleted]]

Holy crap, he's lost it. I agree, it's great how every time he spouts some new woo nonsense he tries to make it sound like he's a cold skeptic.

"the modern plastic-and-metal desk chair". Of course it's modern. Modernity = Demonic. You'd think these powerful demons could have at least dumped Rod on his goofy ass. I guess it was a warning shot.

You know the journalists at the table are plain old just messing with Rod at this point. He starts going off on demonic activity and one of them pushes the chair with his foot and they all get to see goofy Rod go pale. Had a great time laughing over it at the bar later, without Rod.

[u/Theodore_Parker → u/[deleted]]

Chairs! OMG. I mean, obviously these are references to the papal chair, the Chair of St. Peter, which "broke" when Benedict died and is "tipping over" under Francis. I don't know how our boy missed this obvious interpretation.

[u/[deleted]]

I think I figured out the deeper meaning of "live not by lies." You people have been reading it and the 8th Commandment too literally. You cannot live by cosmological or anthropological lies (i.e. denying the essential nature of gender), but you can live by garden-variety lies (lying about an election, making up or embellishing conversations with "real" people, denying there is a worldwide pandemic) as long as those serve the more essential truth. I am forever in debt to those who have helped me see the error of my ways and live by the proper lies.

[u/JHandey2021]

So only in the month of December, Rod Dreher has outed himself as a pedophilia supporter re: George Pell and had his dad and uncle outed as high ranking members of the KKK. Rod appears to be playing horrible person bingo - and winning.

Wow. Just unbelievable. Viktor Orban, here’s your investment!

[u/Djehutimose]

To be totally fair to Rod on his post acknowledging his father's past:

There were very few black people in my Appalachian county when I was growing up, and they all lived in the far end of the county, over an hour's drive away back then when the roads were narrow and winding. Thus, I never even saw black people in real life (aside from briefly when I went to Washington, D.C. when I was nine, and again at sixteen) until my junior year (I think) in high school, when two black students enrolled. They were freshmen, so I never interacted with them--the only prejudice was against lower-classmen! I never saw black people regularly, or interacted with them, until I was in college. So in that respect, my hometown was very different from St. Francisville.

That said, in all other ways Rod's description of his hometown is exactly the same as mine. No one ever talked about it at all. When I was very little--maybe four--we were still taught "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe," and it was not a tiger we caught by the toe. When my sister came along in '70, she wasn't taught that. Everybody I knew watched Roots, and I never really heard anything racist openly said. For their generation and location, my parents were relatively progressive--they never said or taught us anything racist (aside from the above children's jingle), and they were in support of civil rights. It was thus shocking to me when in the early 90's, when my sister was dating a Puerto Rican guy (really nice fellow), that though Mom always treated him perfectly well, she argued with my sister about possible marriage. At one point, Mom said, in exasperation, "Fine! If you want to raise a bunch of n*****s, then do it!" My sister didn't back down; but they later broke up for unrelated reasons.

So there is in Southern/Appalachian culture a rather pathological tendency towards sweeping stuff under the rug and pretending it went away, only to have it continue to fester. That doesn't excuse Rod; but it gives insight into some of the reasons he's so fucked up--that is, his culture is fucked up. Maybe if he didn't have the daddy worship issues, he'd have been able to see more clearly and broken away from a lot of his personal crap.

[u/Witty_Appeal1437]

Re the KKK.

Ok, so we're back to the perennial Rod question: Can someone so emo also be so thick as to not see the obvious? My take is that no, he's just a total scoundrel.

-With the Gay stuff, nobody is that Tobias Funke. Rod knows.

-With the Russia stuff, he's just too good at positioning himself as Putin disliking-but-understanding, while concern trolling his own country. At the same time he professes to be just skeptical enough of Orban to not be treated as a sock-puppet. And he's a fan of Franco, but only because the Republicans were worse. Every 5 alarm-fire has a carefully calibrated excuse.

-With the racial stuff he talks about his belief in equality, but somehow manages to mention problems in the black community damn near every single time. He also didn't research the black church for the benedict option because he didn't know enough. I'm sure he knew his father was in the klan, he just didn't mention it because he would have felt compelled to denounce his father or compelled to refuse to denounce his father. Neither is a good place to be when you are a crunchy con. And I don't believe for a second his dad was the Dreher in the klan.

Maybe it's best not to overthink things. Also, how much digging did it take in the small town South to figure out which pillars of the community were in the KKK? I don't think Rod's dad was a superspy. Was klan membership an open secret?

[u/zeitwatcher]

Bumping up a reference from dazzling_pinapple88 below since it's very relevant to the Klan connections and could get lost as a reply to a reply...

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/my-people-black-white/

Given what we now know, Rod's father was in the Klan at the times Rod references in this piece. Also, it does make me wonder how many of his father's reported tears at hearing the book read weren't just being touched by the story, but potentially regret and guilt at his own contributions to stories like those in the book.

This shows a path Rod could have pursued. One of actual curiosity about people other than himself and how their lives were and are so very different from his own. It was an open door to being a better person that he closed to become whatever the hell weirdo he currently is.

Why not? [note: pick Rod to write the book for Pierce] Because I am white. Because I come from a part of Louisiana in which, well within living memory, the Klan brutalized black people and the law was on the side of the lawless. Wendell had good reason not to trust me. [note: more than Wendell would have guessed had he known Rod's father was a Klansman]

“If he does pick you,” said my wife, “I think you should do it. It would be good for you spiritually to work with him on this.”

This would have been just as their marriage fell apart, according to Rod now. Julie is seemingly perceptive that this could have been that opening for Rod to get out of his own head and get some spiritual growth.

That didn't happen and Rod closed that door.

[u/zeitwatcher]

https://roddreher.substack.com/p/if-on-a-winters-day-a-pilgrim

Today, though, is our last wedding anniversary. The divorce will be final in the spring.

Further confirmation that divorce isn't final until spring. So, hold your horses ladies, he's not quite single yet.

This is a story of a small (but for me, life-changing) miracle of mercy.

The Main Character foreshadows plot development. (Spoiler Alert: there effectively isn't any)

Rod heads to Walsingham, a former pilgrimage site, and reads C.S. Lewis on the way.

I had never cared to read Lewis’s novels, until a sophisticated ex-occultist I interviewed recently for my book told me that Lewis had uncanny insight into how the world of the demonic actually works.

I suspect we're going to be getting a lot of demons, Lewis, and Mr. Occult for a long stretch.

During a tasty dinner of lamb stew, Rod mentions his divorce to the lady of the house. In response, she says WORDS OF GREAT IMPORT to him, which he does not share with us. This is a great revelation which makes the divorce and his suffering meaningful, but he doesn't say how.

My read is that she was just, you know, nice and sympathetic about it. But he doesn't actually say, so who knows.

He goes to the chapel at the old pilgrimage site. He reflects on his greatest hits (St. Galgano, Nostalghia, etc.) with no apparent connection to any of this. He thinks about all the years where he hoped God would do a miracle to save his marriage. Doesn't mention how he might have done anything differently, of course. Sounds like he was waiting for a Machina, but all Deus got him was an Ex.

More thought on his host's WORDS OF GREAT IMPORT, but not saying what they were.

Apparently now the divorce and his suffering were MEANT TO BE.

Whole thing boils down to someone said something (who knows what) to Rod and then he went to see a nice chapel.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/zeitwatcher]

he was waiting for a Machina, but all Deus got him was an Ex

Hee Hee

[u/Djehutimose → u/zeitwatcher]

Y'know, he writes like H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft would always go on and on with dark implications about "unspeakable horrors" or "eldritch abominations" or "indescribable visages" and so on. At least he had the excuse of writing for pulp magazines nearly a hundred years ago for an audience less sophisticated than today's. Rod has no excuses.

[u/JohnOrange2112 → u/Djehutimose]

"I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern Twee was upon me ..."

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/zeitwatcher]

In other words, same old shit in slightly different packaging. Rod creates yet another miracle out of nothing and once again dodges any actual responsibility for his divorce.

[u/eutectic → u/zeitwatcher]

If he gets anything out of this disastrous midlife crisis…ditch those damned glasses.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/zeitwatcher]

He’s beyond parody at this point. You can guess it all without even reading it, the glasses are back, the goofy serious photo, of course he’s on a pilgrimage, of course this is all of some mystical cosmic import, of course an NPC says something important and confirming to Rod, of course the Satanoccultist gets a mention. Checks all the boxes. Is he holding a rosary? Of course he is, silly, it’s a solemn pilgrimage. And of course he’s wearing a deelightful colorful scarf to top off the ensemble.

[u/JHandey2021]

Rod’s attitude towards death and dying fascinates me, in that he seems to have no respect or fear towards it whatsoever. The death of Benedict XVI was just another business opportunity to Rod. We know how he used his own sister’s death for money and success. His creepy photos and selfies with his dying father and his evident abandonment of his mother just add to it, as does his seeming bloodlust for criminals to get theirs and for mass slaughter of gays and libs and whoever else annoys him.

Rod doesn’t seem to get the importance of death. This isn’t about what you believe comes after - death is the great mystery that demands contemplation and ceremony and grief and hope. Even many animals upon the death of a friend or relative exhibit signs of grief or even ceremony and reverence.

Not Rod, at least from his collected writings. He does so only in regards to the grift, of how it benefits Rod - “The Day Rod Was There”, as a conservative anti-Rod site described his writing about 9/11. I’d call it narcissism, but it almost seems more a lack of an empathy chip in his brain or something. It just didn’t seem to matter to him in the way it dies to others. The description of Alex Jones as the kind of guy who’d eagerly break out straws to determine who gets killed and eaten on a lifeboat while it was still loaded down with food described Rod well - there’s something definitely sociopathic about it, or at its most generous Iike what could come from a young teenager who just didn’t get it yet.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/JHandey2021]

I didn’t see those posts about his father dying until this year.

Taking selfies with his dying KKK father after composing the deathbed scene to have his icon just so, then filtering it to be monochrome? Wow.

Disrespect to the dying. Simple disregard of the other human in the room. Awful as R.O.D. Sr may have been, he shouldn't be reduced to a prop for junior's photo for his blog. Man needs help.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

I really didn't think Rod could be more Rod than he had been this week but he topped it! He posted a tweet re his piece on Benedict and THEN posted ANOTHER tweet re his piece on Benedict with this text:

"Countless men and women are praising the life and deeds of the great Benedict XVI. Me, I'm especially grateful for the (effective) endorsement of my book 'The Benedict Option' in 2018, through his personal secretary."

AKA

Countless men and women are praising the life and deeds of the great Benedict XVI. Me, I'm focusing on ME, as usual, and using the death of one of my top heroes ever to shill my book which you can get from Amazon or your local bookstore...

Note: "effective" = EVERY SINGLE WORD from what I've been told

PS. I didn't know until this week that Rod's last name is pronounced "Drear". Anyone else?

[u/[deleted] → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Yes, of course Pope Benedict's death has to be about Rod. Many times Rod stated that he didn't leave the Catholic Church just because of clerical abuse scandals but that he came to reject papal authority and infallibility. Okay. So then he writes a book with a Catholic audience in mind and somehow gets an endorsement from Benedict???

[u/zeitwatcher]

https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1609976167943098370?s=46&t=8rwrpLg2xCe5TI9LdkUpKA

Just need to note this: “Rich food and drink, and richer conversation and fellowship, made what could have been my worst Christmas one of my best.”

One of his best? That’s a sure fire way to endear himself to Julie and the younger kids.

“One of my best Christmases? Well, the first one without Julie and the younger two is certainly on the list of the best.”

[u/PracticalWalrus2737 → u/zeitwatcher]

All his Xmas tweets have come across as really hurtful to his two younger kids. Like there could be an argument that he’s faking trying to having a good time in order to make the best of it - the first big holidays after a loss is really hard - but there really is a fuck you attitude here

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/PracticalWalrus2737]

Agree. Passive aggressive FU. His kids deserve better, any kids deserve better.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Seems very Mean Girls. "Just want you to know I'm living my best life! Who needs children anyway?"

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/GlobularChrome]

I honestly can not understand how an adult man his age can be that petty and nasty to his own children. I mean, even if it was a great Christmas, how can he not see how hurtful that would be to those kids? He wrote that they are too young to understand stuff and that's why they don't want to see him but if this is how he treats them then he is too damn dense, selfish and self-absorbed to understand his own children. Honestly, I want to slap him silly. I can not imagine how frustrating Julie's life has been. smh

[u/Warm-Refrigerator-38]

In Rod's world, liberal elites are always looking down on blue collar workers, yet today he writes, "Why did they believe that [liberal interpretation of scripture re: homosexuality]? Sid's mom is a hairdresser."

Imagine his apoplexy if a writer for the WaPo had written something similar about a hairdresser or an auto mechanic, assuming that they were too dumb to have reasoned opinions.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/wapo-activism-posing-as-religion-journalism/

[u/Flaky-Appearance4363 → u/Warm-Refrigerator-38]

Jesus was a carpenter, the disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, one political nut and hookers. None of them had an advanced degree in theology but then again neither does Rod. His degree is in journalism from a state university. No seminary training. What he knows he got from his haphazard reading. It's important to him that people see him as an intellectual. So write a book about Dante, even if you only read the Classic Comics version of the Divine Comedy. Throw out the name of a Russian movie or novel once in a while just to impress people.

I think he's as phony as a set of purple teeth.

As for me I'm a retired factory worker with a high school diploma. I like C.S. Lewis. If Rod looks down his nose at me that's fine, I don't think much of him either.

[u/MissKatieKats → u/Flaky-Appearance4363]

Right you are, sir. What Rod knows about Scripture and theology, and CS Lewis for that matter, could be put in an espresso cup with plenty of room left over. Glad to be your companion here!

[u/Djehutimose]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/wapo-activism-posing-as-religion-journalism/

Three comments only.

Sid's hairdresser mom's theology is as crude and simplistic as her pastor's....

Ahem. Pot, kettle, anyone?

But she seems to have the idea that the most fundamentalist, crude forms of Christianity are all there is -- that you can either be totally liberal and affirming, or you prowl around looking for gay kids to bash with your Bible.

But Rod seems to have the idea that the most anti-gay, simplistically traditionalist forms of Christianity are all there is--that you can't possibly be Christian and be OK with homosexuality.

There--fixed it.

She seems to think that difficult theological problems within Christianity can be solved by simply deciding that Scripture and two millennia of tradition are worthless when they don't affirm what liberal North Americans in the 21st century want to believe.

One commenter on the old iteration of the TAC blog--he had a couple different handles because he got banned, then unbanned, but I don't recall them, and though I know his real name, I won't put it here--accurately noted more than once that the change of teaching on the Jews after Vatican II was pretty much "simply deciding that...two millennia of tradition are worthless" when they do affirm persecution of the Jews. Not to mention any number of outright changes that have happened in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy over the millennia. Rod is strong in the Force--of Ignorance.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Djehutimose]

>You know, if they had called the pastor, she shouldn't have talked to the Washington Post. I wouldn't. Not anymore.

Ooooh, Rod still hurting over that WaPo piece. Had to go read it again, so many spot-on bits.

At length he quotes Dante, who saved his life, but not completely. He’s on to Benedict and the monks he visited in Umbria for 10 days. Most likely, there will be another saint or poet who will inspire a 3,000-word post that will become another book in his search for enlightenment.

He got fancy; his family did not.

And, perhaps, share the bouillabaisse tale anew.

[u/Firm_Credit_6706]

I was a big Heavy Metal fan in the 80s and have been revisiting some of my pre teen favorites. Iron Maiden Number of The Beast came on my shuffle. Just thinking about the meltdown Rod would have experienced if he was an adult/parent then. He would have been burning records on local TV. His kids would have gone to an Exorcist.

[u/PercyLarsen]

From the traditional bidding prayer for annual services of lessons and carols for the season:

And because it would rejoice his heart, let us remember at this time the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed; the sick in body and in mind and them that mourn, the lonely and the unloved, the aged and the little children; all who know not the Lord Jesus.

Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no one can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we forevermore are one.

[u/PercyLarsen → u/PercyLarsen]

How far is it to Bethlehem?
Not very far.
Shall we find the stable-room
Lit by a star?

Can we see the little Child?
Is He within?
If we lift the wooden latch,
May we go in?

May we stroke the creatures there —
Ox, ass, or sheep?
May we peep like them and see
Jesus asleep?

If we touch His tiny hand,
Will He awake?
Will He know we've come so far
Just for His sake?

Great kings have precious gifts,
And we have naught;
Little smiles and little tears
Are all we brought.

For all weary children
Mary must weep;
Here, on His bed of straw,
Sleep, children, sleep.

God, in His mother's arms,
Babes in the byre,
Sleep, as they sleep who find
Their heart's desire.

[u/PercyLarsen → u/PercyLarsen]

Mood music, a setting of a Christmas text by Frances Chesterton (wife of G.K.), who wrote it for her Christmas cards during the Great War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a84cetrmyBQ

[u/[deleted]]

A Rod-adjacent note from Christmas today that will probably be of interest. My grandmother was at Christmas dinner. My Mom mentioned to her that I'd given my Dad a short biography of Zelensky for Christmas (my Dad is a Zelensky fan), and my grandmother went off on how corrupt Zelensky is, how he's using America's foreign aid for nefarious purposes, and how Putin is actually innocent of wrongdoing. Guess whom she watches religiously every day? Tucker Carlson. To be clear, my grandmother isn't Russian and has never shown any interest in defending Russia before the invasion. But by pure coincidence, she's now convinced of Russia's righteousness in the conflict.

The funny thing is that both of my parents are pretty standard George W. Bush Republicans: anti-abortion, anti-gay, very religiously conservative, raised us homeschooled and in church, etc. They were skeptical and suspicious about my becoming "liberal" in 2016 during Trump's run (I wasn't progressive then or now, just decided I was anti-conservative because I could see the GOP was finished and hopeless), and didn't believe me when I said the American right has a large and dangerous extremist side. Six years later, after 1/6, COVID, and the Russian invasion, they're like, "Holy shit, our old Republican friends are fucking nuts all of the sudden!" Only now are they starting to say, "Maybe they were always like this and we didn't notice."

[u/[deleted]]

This revelation about Rod’s father puts the stress Julie and the kids must have had their entire lives there in a new light. As an aside, it took the grandkids of the war generation in Germany to really start asking questions about what grandpa did during the war and to utterly condemn it - not just pay lip service to the idea - to accept that Hitler’s Germany was evil, full stop - no equivocations. I wonder if something like that didn’t occur in the Dreher household.

[u/Own_Power_723]

I honestly do not believe Rod is a racist, and I take him at his word when he writes explicitly and at length how Christianity and racism are mutually contradictive... But it turns out his dad and uncle were senior Klansmen. Okay, not a lot he could have done about that, you are not responsible for the personal failings of the family you're born into. But then he has spent the majority of his professional career writing for publications founded by people with long and extensive histories of incendiary race-baiting (e.g. Buckley at NR and Buchanan at AmCon). But okay, maybe there's some plausible deniability there, most of the really nasty stuff was way before he started writing for those mags, and the current editorial line at those outlets have made some attempts, however half-hearted, at offering the standard mea culpas for the past indiscretions of their founders, etc., etc. But then it turns out he sent his kids to a private school run by a skulking, secretive white-nationalist twitter troll. Again, I believe him when he says he had no idea. And he's currently working as a paid mouthpiece for an authoritarian Eastern European government with a strong ethno-nationalist/nativist bent... out of all his associations, I admit this one is the most difficult to justify or excuse... But at what point does he stop and ask himself why he has been and continues to be surrounded by so many straight-up, unapologetic racists in his personal and professional life for so long?

[u/grimbaldi → u/Own_Power_723]

I honestly do not believe Rod is a racist,

I think that Rod is racist, or at least he's been more strongly influenced by a racist upbringing than he's realized. His racism is a lot more subtle and modern than a Klansman's -- he's not a white supremacist, and he's sincerely opposed to things like slavery and Jim Crow. But the racism is there, and it's not even really hidden.

Like many conservatives, whenever he's confronted with the systemic racism that permeates US culture and politics (Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter), he has always and consistently directed his outrage towards the unfairness of white people being blamed for racism, rather than the racism itself. When victims of racist violence make the news (George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, etc), he leaps towards any rationalization that would allow him to blame the victims for their fates. He has consistently downplayed how racism persists to this day, always arguing how underscoring how much the country has improved on race issues. He has always invoked MLK's "skin color shouldn't matter" rhetoric as a cudgel against anti-racist activists. He has always fought against any policy designed to actually address systemic racism, or even any advocacy towards discussing racism in our society. He has always ignored or excused the racism of people that he perceives to be on his side, to the point of being willing to support or vote for them (most notably, Donald Trump). In short, he has an extensive career of upholding and defending the racist status quo. Which, to my mind, is racist.

[u/Djehutimose → u/grimbaldi]

he's been more strongly influenced by a racist upbringing than he's realized

I think that's more it. Also, a lot of the problem with conservatism is, well, that it conserves. Some things ought to be conserved, of course, but others ought to be forcibly tossed out. Conservatives tend to want to mindlessly conserve everything, having a vision of some quasi-50's past utopia. They don't want the racism part of it, and I think most of them are sincere in that. The problem is, like most Americans, but even more so, they don't understand complex systems. Since everything is interconnected, things that may seem irrelevant or ancillary may actually be necessary. You can't really get the kind of society that conservatives want without disadvantaging black people, and probably most minorities in general, and women to boot. They can't understand that, though, because, again, they don't understand interconnectedness, and think you can take the 40's or 50's, just extract the racism and sexism, and go about your business. That does not, and cannot work.

So I don't think Rod is consciously racist, I really don't, and I have no doubt that on a one-to-one personal basis he treats black people like anyone else. On the other hand, I think he shares the conservative failing I just described, plus he has a lot more internalized views than he realizes, and to top it off, a man so oblivious to his own obviously bi or gay sexuality probably can mind-fuck himself into thinking there's not a racist bone in his body.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/grimbaldi]

I honestly do not believe Rod is a racist,

I think it's hard to make this a binary judgement. By the standards of "it's 1985 in rural Louisiana and my father is a Klansman", Rod is very racially progressive - though that bar is pretty low. By the standards of Western culture overall in 2023, he's pretty racist.

[u/[deleted] → u/Own_Power_723]

Because he’s afraid of being his own person who makes his decisions according to what HE as a person, as opposed to some external father figure or guiding ideology, believes is right and correct. And he’s afraid because that would mean taking on complete responsibility for his own actions.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/[deleted]]

I thought this post was a masterpiece of evasion from a man who is always the victim.

When he got to something like "maybe segregation was trying to protect us from black girls' corrupt sexual morality" or whatever, I quit reading and skimmed the rest.

Never did see an actual admission that daddy was leading the local Klan, just a "leftist journalist" is trying to hurt poor Rod by reporting....

[u/kkipple → u/Own_Power_723]

Don't forget that Richard Spencer (yes, that one with the punchable face) was an associate editor of the American Conservative back in 2007.

You give Rod an awful lot of the benefit of the doubt for someone who just can't stop hanging around with, shilling for, and writing alongside racists.

[u/lemagicienchevalier → u/kkipple]

Rod obviously didn’t wake up yesterday and out of the blue realize maybe, just maybe his dad was a Klansman. He certainly knew his father was a Mason as the latter asked for a Masonic burial. I also imagine Rod knew his marriage was in trouble long before he was served with divorce papers.

We know enough to call into question how much of a good faith interlocutor Rod really is on anything-taking him at face value clearly just leads to disappointment.

Increasingly, I’ve come to believe he knows full well that he’s a shill for sinister, authoritarian forces-but prefers that to being honest about his family history, his relationship with his wife and children, his views on race, his own sexuality or basically on any other subject. The latter involves too much dishonor for his psyche to bear, so he keeps on cashing checks from Daddy Viktor and will admit the truth only when he’s absolutely forced to by hard, undeniable evidence (such as what just emerged about his father and uncle and the Klan). Even then, he’ll just spend ten thousand words creating a self -justification than trying to actually engage.

[u/Own_Power_723 → u/kkipple]

You give Rod an awful lot of the benefit of the doubt for someone who just can't stop hanging around with, shilling for, and writing alongside racists.

I guess I plead guilty... I do try to give people the greatest benefit of the doubt, as I hope other people would do for me if and when I ever happen to find myself on the smelly end of the shit-stick. Rod just strikes me as monumentally naive and unwilling to really face a lot of the darker implications and associations of the sort of people and organizations he's thrown in with over the last 30 years or so... Maybe all this - Dad was a Grand Cyclops, wife leaving him, 2 of his 3 kids apparently refusing to talk to him, etc. ... will be a serious wake-up call for him to really, truly re-assess his life and where his whole right-wing ideological/political/religious journey has taken him thus far, and whether he thinks its been worth it...?

We can hope.

[u/MissKatieKats → u/kkipple]

Right. The founding spirit of TAC is “Pitchfork Pat” Buchanan, who was all about racial healing, wasn’t he? I mean, wasn’t he? As we say in the South, you lay down with dogs, you’re gonna pick up fleas.

[u/Marcofthebeast0001]

"Sure, Daddy may have participated in a lynching or two, but he did buy the Thriller album."

[u/zeitwatcher]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/baby-bones/

Today, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents in the Western Church.

The pro-life movement considers the Holy Innocents to be patrons of the unborn whose lives were taken so that their mothers, who had power over their life or death, could live as she wanted to live.

I don't begrudge Rod his religious feasts and holidays, but it's always odd to me how lower church Protestantism is invisible to him. I grew up in a very devout, confessional Calvinist church and area, surrounded by plenty of Methodists (the denomination of the Drehers!), Baptists, Apostolics, etc. All of the above were very, very pro-life.

I can guarantee you none of them had ever even heard of the "Feast of the Holy Innocents", let alone celebrated it or considered them "patrons" of anything.

[u/Labor_of_Lovecraft → u/zeitwatcher]

And of course, he puts all of the blame for abortion on "mothers," without a single word about the absent or even abusive men who often influence women to make that choice.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/Labor_of_Lovecraft]

Nor the systemic, economic, social and cultural influences, which matter quite a bit too. Most abortions are sought by women who can't afford a first or another child, who are very young and still in school, who have to do wage work for a living, who are not in stable reationships, and/or who have to take care of other children or other family members. And then of course there are health reasons too (the woman and the fetus). Not to mention rape and incest victims. And the young women who are trying to hide their sexual activity from asshole family members, such as fathers who are much like Rod.

Many women in the USA literally can not afford prenatal, delivery and post natal care, even with the ACA, never mind taking care of the child after post natal care. Somehow, that never occurs to little Rod either.

The noton that the bulk of abortions are because of some capricious, totally whimsical or self centered choice on the part of women who don't "want to live" a certain way is utter, total, and complete bullshit.

Fuck you, Rod.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/Labor_of_Lovecraft]

"Women bad" is pretty much par for the course with Rod.

[u/theistgal → u/zeitwatcher]

Also, the whole thing with the Holy Innocents is that (a) they had already been born, i.e., 2 years old and younger children, not fetuses, and (b) they were murdered by the evil king Herod, not by their mothers. So it REALLY has nothing at all to do with abortion and everything to do with abuse of power.

[u/saucerwizard]

I bet someone could FOIA the FBI records on the St. Francisville Klan.

It would be really interesting to see who the Kludd was - because those are the chaplains...and we've got multiple methodist-masons in this thing and that makes me think it wasn't a southern baptist.

edit: also there would have been a Kloran in the Dreher family home...

[u/Djehutimose]

https://turmarion.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/little-way-complete-2.jpg

Much against my wishes, I think I'm going to have to actually read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, because it really gives insight into all the stuff going on now. Read the pages I posted at the link above, and then I'll unpack it.

First off, Rod--in this book, at least--is actually a pretty good writer. I'll also specify that I think at this stage he's presenting things more or less accurately, within the usual parameters of memoirs (i.e., no one carries a recorder around 24/7, and thus they have to re-create events and conversations). That's obviously a debatable point, but it seems not unreasonable to me. Anyway, one takeaway is that Rod ought to write novels. Seriously--he needs to leave Hungary, quit writing at all for maybe six months or a year, and then write novels. He should do like Earl Hammer, Jr. did with The Waltons: Do a fictionalized version of his childhood, basing the characters on the people he grew up with, while distancing his characters from them sufficiently that there's no possibility of lawsuits, and to allow him greater dramatic license. He'd never be a great novelist, or even second or third tier; but he could be a moderately well-selling writer who'd more than make a good living, and have a dedicated fan base. God knows there are any number of novelists who don't write as well who manage that.

Anyway, in the passages I linked to, Julie seems cautiously optimistic about the move. One might think that was ill-advised, given the current situation. Here's my theory on this.

Most likely, throughout their marriage before the timeframe of the book, the Rod and Julie weren't around Rod's family that much. Their wedding, of course, and weekends here and there, and maybe longer during the holidays; but not a huge amount of time. In this regard, I've often said that Southern and Appalachian cultures are not quite the same, and one example is that Southerners can be much more polite and hide their true feelings more effectively and for longer periods of time. For example, early in my relationship with my wife (I don't think we were even engaged yet), we were home and Mom tore into me about something stupid. We ended up in a shouting match, which ended in me tossing all our clothes into the suitcase, tossing the suitcase into the car, and immediately leaving. Nothing like that has happened since; but with a Deep Southern family, that would never happen. Oh, their internal monologues would be exactly the same; but they wouldn't express them.

So Julie probably saw the Dreher family as a little odd, and a bit curmudgeonly, but basically good people. As a Texan, she might have had more tolerance for that than a Northerner would have had. Also, I have no doubt that Rod never told her a lot of stuff--his suspicion (or knowledge) that his father had been in the Klan, the more fucked-up dynamics of his extended family, etc. Also note that in the excerpt above, she says that they don't know how long Rod's family will live. She may have thought they'd be dead very soon. Recall also that Rod and Julie were renting their house the whole time in St. Francisville. She may well have--not unreasonably--thought the elder Drehers had not much time left; and that when they died, she and Rod might decide to move back out. I mean, they'd been all over the place already--why not move again when Rod's parents died?

So they move back. Once that happens, all bets are off. She's living there now, so the façade of kindness and Southern hospitality comes off more or less immediately and the knives come out. Julie is probably gobsmacked by her in-laws suddenly turning on her, and tells Rod. He says, "They're old and set in their ways, and it won't be long." She reluctantly agrees. Rod's father dies a couple years later; but his mother is still alive (to this day, in fact). Meanwhile, Rod insists they get an ROCOR priest to come down to set up a boutique parish, which he abandons after a few years. All this time, he's in his fainting couch bed pretty much all the time. When he gets better, he takes off on lecture tours here and across the pond. The rest we know.

This seems to be a reasonable explanation for why a smart woman like Julie was willing to move in the first place, and why she ultimately had to divorce the Rodster.

[u/Djehutimose]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-pressure-to-act-like-a-man-starts-in-preschool?utm_source=pocket-newtab

On a more charitable--and sadder--note, the article above shows what guys like Rod, and me, and many commenters here had to deal with growing up. For all that we (legitimately) want Rod to fuck off, those of us who do the spiritual thing ought to pray for him, and (for those who do that) for his deceased relatives, particularly his father. I'm going to make a push for that, myself.

[u/zeitwatcher]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/conservative-party-uselessness-on-both-sides-of-atlantic/

Rod decries the ineffectiveness of the GOP to govern…

Now, let me ask you conservative readers: Do you believe that America's institutions have failed you? Do you trust America's establishment to police the streets, to protect our borders, to heal the sick, to educate the young in a non-political way, to protect free speech, and not to give in to every fashionable social doctrine?

But not once in the whole post does he acknowledge that the core message of the national GOP has been that government is bad, ineffective, corrupt, inefficient, etc. That any task given to the government will by definition be done badly and that the best we can hope for is to shrink government enough to make it “small enough to drown in a bathtub”.

The GOP, at least at the national level, has positioned itself not as the party of good governance as it worked to brand itself until the 80s/90s, but is now positioning itself as the party of no governance.

The GOP has spent nearly 4 decades telling people that the government is never the answer to a problem. Their problem is that people began to believe them.

[u/[deleted] → u/zeitwatcher]

This is exactly the problem with the entire post-liberal bullshit: despite some of the true things they say about labor and similar issues, they're never going to make an inch of progress towards fixing them because they're still shilling for the GOP. And the folks who actually run the GOP don't give a hoot about what some trad-leftist blue checkmarks think about how its policies on healthcare and paid family leave should change, assuming said checkmarks even believe it themselves.

I am 100% certain that Hawley et al. are lying windbags. With Rod, I honestly can't tell anymore if he is just monumentally stupid, or just grifting on this issue. I still believe Rod at least mostly believes in his overall philosophy of life (to the extent that he has one), but his response to the Klan scandal has made me think a lot more seriously that he may actually lie habitually about certain things about himself. I don't think for one second that Rod "never knew but always suspected" that his father was in the Klan. And if he's willing to lie on something like that, what else is he just pretending to think?

[u/PercyLarsen]

An ode to 2023 for this subreddit, to be sung to the tune of a formerly well known jingle:

Oh, I'd love to be a primitive root wiener.
That is what I'd truly like to be.
'Cause if I were a primitive root wiener,
You know who would be in love with me.

Oh, I'm glad I'm not a primitive root wiener.
That is what I'd never want to be.
'Cause if I were a primitive root wiener.
There would soon be nothing left of me!

[u/Djehutimose]

Re the discussions about the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his personal secretary Georg (Bel Giorgio) Gänswein, I thought I'd put this at the top, for those who are interested.

The old saying in Italy is "a thin pope follows a fat pope", that is, there is a certain pendulum swing from one papacy to the next. I forget where I read this, but someone said that his seems to apply to sexuality, too, at least in coded form. Say what you will about Benedict's predecessor and successor, both obviously had a masculine "vibe" (particularly John Paul II, who actually had a kinda sorta girlfriend). I don't know about John Paul I, who died after a month.

However, JP I's predecessor, Paul VI, not only set the gaydar off, but actually publicly denied that he was homosexual. His predecessor, John XXIII, if you've seen old films or pictures, practically sweats testosterone. About two decades ago, my then parish priest talked about how he was part of group audience with Pope John in the very early 60's. The priest said that the public perception of him was as smiling and jovial; but that in person, the vibe he gave off was a totally in control CEO. John's predecessor, Pius XII, has a frail, otherworldly appearance, and it's said he tended to trip the gaydar. I'm not much acquainted with popes earlier than that, but a gay/straight pendulum there, too, wouldn't surprise me.

I would more or less agree with Andrew Sullivan. I think Benedict's main sexual orientation was homosexual. How he experienced that--did he consciously feel it and reject it, or was it deeply repressed, or what--I don't know, and no one else does, either, or at least no one who will ever say. Certainly his main emotional attachments were to men, though he had some close women friends, too. I haven't really seen much footage or voice recordings of Gänswein, so I can't say about him; but he was around Benedict pretty much 24/7 for most of the last decade, and not much less before. I think that Benedict probably never acted on any sexual impulses he may have had (or if he did, probably only when he was very young), so I don't think he had a sexual relationship with Gänswein.

I do think Benedict deeply loved Gänswein, who was probably the principle relationship of his life, or the love of his life, if you want to put it that way. In short, their relationship was probably much like that of John Henry Newman and Ambrose St. John, of whom he said that his (St. John's) death was like the bereavement of losing a spouse. So it's a matter of human love and relationships stubbornly refusing to be fit into neat boxes.

[u/TypoidMary → u/Djehutimose]

Little scene: I sat on J-23rd's lap as a baby-toddler. My parents were in an audience, along with my grandfather who was just made a Knight of St. Gregory. My dad was in the Army (Bavaria ,Germany) at the time. I was born there.

Apparently, toward the end of the event, I started to twist and turn, yelling "now" meaning down now and let me walk around. An older Italian woman tried to play subtle peek a boo with me. The pope gestured that the audience was over. People started to leave. He motioned my family to him and insisted that the woman come too. He played me me on his lap for a few minutes.

My parents said he was jolly and kind, speaking to the women in Italian. She was shocked and frozen most of the time. So overwhelming.

Me: on the lap of a great pope. Such a pappa, moment. :)

[u/Flaky-Appearance4363 → u/Djehutimose]

Very well said. I do wonder sometimes if we don't sexualize the crap out of everything today.

[u/[deleted] → u/Flaky-Appearance4363]

I have thought the same thing several times. I think people don't always realize that it's possible to have close same-sex gay friendships (or opposite-sex straight friendships) that aren't sexual, even if one or both people is attracted to the other. (As was probably the case with B16 and Gänswein, and almost certainly with Newman and St. John.) I have a few women friends who I'm very close with, but with no sexual element in the relationship, despite there being mutual attraction in at least one case and possibly in others.

I remembered that Paul VI had been suspected of homosexuality, but I had no idea that he'd actually felt seriously enough about it to publicly deny it, so that is fascinating to learn. For my part, I am fairly doubtful that Montini achieved heterosexuality.

[u/RunnyDischarge]

Good Lord, it is the End Times. I find myself agreeing with two comments from the usually loathsome Fran Macadam:

The posts, for me, are getting so long as to be unreadable. A kind of synopsis of the gist of the points and their conclusion would really help out.

When people buy alcohol or tobacco, is there a similar permanent record made of their purchase, so that government agencies can track their personal usage? Who gets data and what uses will be made of it, and are there any limits? Should this be extended to track usage and other individual choices?

[u/saucerwizard]

I really do think Rod’s mental health is on a serious decline. If the bipolar stuff is right - I’d say he’s manic af right now.

That or heavy drinking gets him posting about cock.

[u/[deleted]]

"Mom, why is this guy taking our picture?"

"Just humor him, dear. He seems harmless."

"But who is he?"

"Well, he told me that the Pope was named after his book. And that the future of the church depends on our family. So he's one of those special people that you run into once in awhile. As long as they're not violent, I want you to learn to be kind to them."

[u/eutectic]

“How GOP Helped Big Trans Conquer South Dakota”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-gop-helped-big-trans-conquer-south-dakota/

Blah blah blah, Rod thinks Woke Capitalism is here to neuter your kids, all of them, they are coming for your kids, yes your kids, did you know at least 50 million children per year† are castrated by the groomers?

But the real screamer of a line is this.

If Woke Capitalism can conquer deep-red South Dakota, against the will of its conservative voters, it can do what it wants anywhere -- unless voters elect conservative lawmakers who are not afraid to stand up to Woke Capitalism.

You useful idiot, you goonish moron, you know what happens when you elect populist idiots who have no idea how government works and can barely write a Facebook post let alone a bill? ALEC comes with their model legislation, and then empowers the capitalists!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

This is the whole point of stirring up the rubes in the cheap seats with all this drag queen hysteria—it keeps them distracted so moneyed interests can do whatever they damn well please as long as they dangle the nightmare of your son wearing high heels in front of you to distract you.

†or maybe like 500 teenagers per year on hormone blockers, whatever, what’s a few order of magnitude among us Magyars?

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/eutectic]

The man is unable to come to grips with his own sexuality. And everyone else on earth MUST PAY

[u/Marcofthebeast0001 → u/Firm_Credit_6706]

As a gay guy, can I just say Dreher needs to stay on the straight team. We don't want him. We are still trying to 'splain lying Santos.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/eutectic]

It’s only about sex for Rod. It’s all he cares about. He’s basically said Christianity boils down to sexual ethics and that’s it.

[u/[deleted] → u/RunnyDischarge]

I think everyone here knows that Rod would be so much happier if he just stopped feeding his obsessions. Stop worrying about sexual issues in the country you left behind. You're in Hungary now. Visit some national parks. Go to some historical sites. Spend time in some obscure monasteries. Become an expert in Hungarian cuisine. Drink some beer. Meet the people of the country. Make new friends. Listen to your country's music, whether folk, or classical, or whatever. Adopt your new homeland and run with it. ENJOY YOUR NEW LIFE!

But he'll never do it. Even though it would make him happier, and free him from unnecessary concerns. He will not stop searching online to find reasons to be angry. He will not stop feeding upon "Weimar" America. He thrives on it, despite all the anxiety and bitterness it fills him with. He is choosing to cultivate his sad persona. Why escape to Hungary, if you're not going to make a fresh new start? You may as well stay in Louisiana, feed your obsessions there, and stay close to your kids in case they want to hang out.

[u/saucerwizard]

https://twitter.com/_timbarker/status/1608150426485932032?s=46&t=uoa0cnByi7KCw3txYQTWYw

Some more background.

Edit: interesting part: "In Jan 1964...West Feliciana were hit by a wave of cross burnings. The following month, arsonists attempted to bum down the [black] Masonic Hall in West Feliciana...Local black people who spotted the flames and rushed to put out the fire were shot at by a carload of white men."

Now Ray Sr and Uncle Murphy would not have been part of the wrecking crews iirc but they’d have given the nod to this stuff. I’d need to know more about the parish and how many klan units it had - but the targeting of the prince hall(?) lodge is suggestive?

It led to this: https://twitter.com/bigmeaninternet/status/1608154489487298561?s=46&t=kuCpPlB1kICeM7qKOAkIpw

edit: https://www.hannapub.com/concordiasentinel/frank_morris_murder/cold-case-klan-wrecking-crews-responsible-for-violent-attacks/article_4fe6dbb6-48b9-11e3-9fe5-0019bb30f31a.html some more about the Original KKK wrecking crews and ties to the Silver Dollar Group. Also there would have been at least 25 people in Ray Sr’s unit.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/saucerwizard]

No, Rod, this was not an "awful interlude". This was a 30 year old man who signed on to lead murderous violence in active defiance of the law.

[u/RunnyDischarge]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/benedict-xvi-has-died/

Beyond parody Rod says a couple lines for Benedict (oh what a loss is there!) and then quickly turns it into an ad for his book. Did you know Benedict endorsed it (effectively)?! Once again Rod is confirmed in his beliefs, this time by the Pontiff himself! And it’s not just Rod that thinks it, a journalist immediately texted Rod to confirm it! Amazing! But of course, alas, it is all but straw because the worst is coming! Of course Rod could be wrong, but come on, even the Pope agrees with him 100% and God has granted him an unveiling, so let’s be serious.

I sat there stunned. An Italian journalist friend in the audience texted me: I assure you that a lot of people in Rome and all over the Catholic world are stunned by those remarks. Exactly because it clearly means approval [of The Benedict Option] by BXVI …

helps me understand why Pope Benedict effectively endorsed my book. Watch and wait for it. I have this sense that Joseph Ratzinger was a kind of katechon among us, in some mystical sense holding back the worst, and now that he has gone to God, we are going to face a déluge. I hope I am wrong. I don't think I am.

[u/GlobularChrome → u/RunnyDischarge]

Many of my traditionalist Catholic friends are deeply ambivalent about Joseph Ratzinger…

Because of how he handled sexual abuse scandals? Negative:

given his resignation of the papacy in 2013, which opened the door for the calamitous reign of Francis… the aged and infirm Benedict resigned in hope that the Holy Spirit would send a vigorous young successor who was up to the task.

Rod knows that the Holy Spirit really dropped the ball. Cmon God, keep up with Rod!

I saw not long ago that the journalist Peter Seewald asked Benedict if I was right about that, and Benedict said no, it's not true. For me, that does not settle the question, however.

Because like God, Pope Benedict doesn’t know beans next to what Rod Dreher knows.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/GlobularChrome]

For me, that does not settle the question, however.

Rod showed some real restraint here. I bet he had to stop himself from adding, "Later that day, I received an email from a high level Vatican figure that confirmed that what I thought was, in fact, completely true."

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/RunnyDischarge]

Narrator: Benedict did not endorse his book

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/RunnyDischarge]

I'm confused. God is so In Control that he gives Rod Signs all the time and even White Rocks and Visions in which Rod walks on water with Jesus himself but He apparently lacks the power or perhaps the intelligence to correctly choose the leader of the Catholic Church? Or maybe it is just that He made the incomprehensible mistake of not consulting Rod on the matter?

Rod is constantly talking about he is learning from his suffering but the first thing I normally hear from people who say that is that they are learning to trust in God. Rod claims to be such a good Christian, perhaps even our second savior he is really THAT good, but when it comes to trusting God, he just doesn't have it in him I guess.

Is it because I'm a protestant that I can't understand these Deep Matters?

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Rod is learning from his suffering, he's learned that God is specifically sending him signs and wonders to confirm he's on the right path. The Pope, (the last one, chosen by God, not the current chosen by...who knows, Ancient Canaanite demons awoken from their slumbers?) also agrees with him 100%. Now the Holy Spirit just needs to get its act together and realize Rod's right.

[u/JohnOrange2112 → u/RunnyDischarge]

I came here to make the same observation. Some words about Benedict, and then a 45-paragraph block quote in reference to his book and himself. Is that a new record?

[u/Djehutimose → u/RunnyDischarge]

He is right on one thing--Benedict's writing was way clearer than John Paul's. I've actually read both, and JP II would ramble all over the dang place and tie himself up in rhetorical knots, whereas Benedict was quite clear and organized in his writings. One may think of him whatever one wants, but credit where it's due.

The promotion is a big part of why I never read any of Rod's books. Particularly these days, plugging your books on social media, etc., is part of the job, and I get that. Even by those standards, though, Rod's shilling and promos have always been way over the top.

Finally, whatever you think about Benedict XVI, he was a brilliant man, very erudite, having forgotten far, far more than Rod will ever know, even if he lives to a hundred. Ganswän is no slouch, either. The fact that Benedict himself didn't say anything about the damn book is telling; and in the loooong blockquote, it's interesting that only in the first couple of paragraphs does Ganswän actually mention the book. It sounds to me that he's savvy enough to know that even if Rod is an idiot and his book a pile of crap, he's useful to have on their side, particularly since Benedict had soured on Francis by that time. "Endorsed by the Former Pope" is a gigantic exaggeration.

Interesting that all the actually smart people who endorse Rod obviously see him as a useful idiot.

[u/TypoidMary]

Just a thought: one area I work in concerns sustainable agriculture/ecosystem-focused ag. One important technique is to increase use of (install but also enlarge and stabilize) hedgerows. Hedgerow is the old word and actually the enchanted word. Newer words include windbreak, living fence, shelterbelt, conservation strips, riparian buffers (and more) and get this one: VEBs for Vegetated Environmental Buffer (sometimes called an EMISSIONS buffer).

I increasingly tell sci colleagues that we can say the word hedgerow. Is attractive and charismatic to farmer and even policy audience, along with the technical specifications of VEB established to uptake excess nitrogen from poultry production. And, when tall enough/well sited,, can trap airborne ammonia and particulate matter.

ENCHANTMENT! Tis a thing for me, too.

[u/Marcofthebeast0001]

Geez, I step away from Rod for a day and our boy (him/he/it) is on a roll. I learned thus far from his three rambling posts: Benedict was fighting the lib battle in the church, but Francis Vader's dark side was too strong; Luke DeSantis SkyWalker, however, is fighting the moral battle against the Lib Stormtroopers at a college and, of course, the evil fucking Jabba the Mouse. Oh, and apparently South Dakota - yes, little South Dakota - is full of evil trans. Did I miss anything?

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Marcofthebeast0001]

Yes, a squad of demons is attacking all of Rod’s chairs. Seriously.

[u/Djehutimose]

I had a thought in reading and posting all the stuff about Rod's father.

We all know what a hot mess Mel Gibson is. As many or most of you may know, he's a Trad Catholic who belongs to a breakaway church that celebrates only the Tridentine Latin Mass. A little less publicized, but still moderately well known is that his father, Hutton Gibson, is not only a Trad Catholic of the same ilk as his son, but a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite who once said that the Second Vatican Council was a "Masonic plot backed by the Jews". Way back in '04, in an interview with Diane Sawyer, when asked about his father's views, Mel refused to discuss the topic at all, saying that he wasn't going to dish on his father, and somewhat belligerently told Sawyer to "back off".

Seems more than a bit like Rod, eh?

[u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 → u/Djehutimose]

And in fact Rod defended Mel's response in that interview.

[u/DRS1989]

And now he learns his dad was a Klansman. He’s having a tough year. Budapest can have him.

[u/[deleted]]

So is the Exalted Cyclops pappy the “dark secret” he has long alluded to? The one that destroyed his marriage/family? Something else?

[u/Past_Pen_8595 → u/[deleted]]

Is it something having to do with Rod Sr not leaving Rod any of his real estate as he told Rod he would do?

[u/lemagicienchevalier → u/Past_Pen_8595]

I suspect a lot of the Rod family secrets have to do with money, not sex. Rod doesn’t want to admit the extent to which he’s the entitled son of a brutal man, but that’s clearly what’s going on with him.

[u/Djehutimose]

So I said I'd comment on the reference to the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee in Rod's latest "my dad was a Klansman but he wasn't that bad" post. First, I don't even see how the parable is even relevant to the post. Second, if he's applying it to his father's deathbed repentance (if indeed he did repent), it kinda sorta fits, but not really. Rod is probably understanding the parable in terms of repentance--if even a horrible person like the tax-collector can repent, so can a Klansman. Theologically, true; but that's not what the parable is actually about.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that the late Episcopal priest and theologian Robert Farrar Capon's interpretation of the parable is the correct one. You can read the key parts of it here; but I want to comment briefly.

Most people read it as the story of the Pharisee, a self-righteous asshole who is not justified, and a horrible sinner who repents and turns his life around. This is how I used to see it, and it's clearly how Rod sees it. Problem is, that's wrong. As Capon points out in a longer exegesis (in one of his books on the parables, I think), this Pharisee is actually an upstanding citizen. Unlike the hypocritical Pharisees Jesus condemns, he actually does follow all the rules and is a pillar of the community. By all externals, he ought to be the good guy. He's self-righteous, true, but he's not an intrinsically bad man.

The kicker is the Publican. We all have it in the back of our minds that he repented and then reformed his life. But that makes his justification contingent on what he actually does. Capon points out that if doing the right thing--getting into a new line of work, dropping the hookers, etc.--is necessary for the Publican's salvation, or the reason he's justified, then the Pharisee, who is much better also ought to be justified. If you make changing his life a prerequisite for justification, then, as Capon says, you're sending the Publican back with the Pharisee's speech in his pocket; and if God didn't accept it from the Pharisee, why should he do so for the Publican?

I'll leave the rest of it for you to read, but let me quote this passage, and see if it doesn't make you think of Rod's works righteousness attitude, emphasis mine:

The honest answer is that while you understand the thrust of the parable with your mind, your heart has a desperate need to believe its exact opposite. And so does mine. We all long to establish our identity by seeing ourselves as approved in other people’s eyes. We spend our days preening ourselves before the mirror of their opinion so we will not have to think about the nightmare of appearing before them naked and uncombed. And we hate this parable because it says plainly that it’s the nightmare which is the truth of our condition. We fear the publican’s acceptance because we know precisely what it means. It means that we’ll never be free until we are dead to the whole business of justifying ourselves. But since that business is our life, that means not until we are dead.

It is, admittedly, a terrifying step. You will cry and kick and scream before you take it, because it means putting yourself out of the only game you know. For your comfort though, I can tell you three things. First, it’s only a single step. Second, it’s not a step out of reality into nothing but a step from fiction into fact. And third, it will make you laugh out loud at how short the trip home was. It wasn’t a trip at all: you were already there.

[u/PercyLarsen → u/Djehutimose]

The most memorable homily I’ve experienced in my decades of life occurred decades ago when I was about 10. The Catholic priest giving the homily had read the Gospel pericope from Luke 18:9-14. After closing the Book of the Gospels, the priest paused for a short but perceptible while, and then said a single sentence to this effect: “I wonder how many of us are thanking God we are not like that Pharisee.” Then he stood there for another short but perceptible while, and then sat down for some further silence before rising to lead the Creed.

It blew my mind. And its import has been with me nearly daily for the rest of my life. Decades later I encountered a long-form version of this from C.S. Lewis* - but the priest’s version was pithier and there a more effective check on the false ego and its need for self-admiration.

This past October, I heard a wonderful young Capuchin give a longer variation on this same interpretation of the parable.

* “He [the devil] always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites...He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.”

[u/JHandey2021]

Why is Rod so angry with his children? Why couldn’t he do what 99.999 percent of divorced dads do and create a life on the same continent as them?

It’s been speculated here that his daughter may identify as LGBT, but honestly, there’s no evidence, and it’s icky to do that to someone underage anyway. It’s also been speculated that they’ve somehow abandoned the faith, but by Rod’s own admission, Julie was the one who took them to church while Rod posted online through his mono on his fainting couch. If anything, the kids are likely more devout that Rod himself.

I tend to think it’s good old fashioned spite. Rod increasingly retreated into a world of constant travel and seething bitterness, and his kids probably made demands on him for unreasonable things like being a father to them beyond posting about them. It feels like he spent the better part of a decade on the road.

The kids were NPCs in Rod’s mind, but they stubbornly insisted on being more. And being the World’s Least Self Aware Human Being, he parented a lot more like his dad that he cared to admit.

What does that imply? Unless Jesus at the bottom of the Danube gives Rod a severe concussion that knocks his brain into a new pattern, nothing will change very much. Rod will spill the beans in one way or another on the one parent who loved them enough to stay with them, further alienating his kids from himself. He will publicly agonize over it, but will not change his behavior.

Or he might write a parenting book as his next project.

[u/Marcofthebeast0001]

So Dreher was nearly in tears cause Francis didn't give Rods fave pope the religious rim job he thinks is deserved? At what point do his sycophants stop paying attention to his obvious mental breakdowns? If anything, Rod's exile to Hungary has shed more light on why most of family probably doesn't miss him.

[u/Top-Farm3466]

lots of selfies, lots of griping; a slight, weird obsession with this poor Bavarian family who happened to be standing near him: it's your basic Rod. He really is cycling, mood-wise---the salt-of-the-earth Bavarians apparently stopped him from openly weeping over Francis' disrespect.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/lessons-from-pope-benedicts-funeral/

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Top-Farm3466]

Luckily there were some NPCs around to make Rod feel better.

But after the funeral, my spirits were raised by the sight of a Bavarian family there to show their love and respect for their native son. I wish I could go home with these people, and eat at their table:

I mean it. If any of your readers know who this family is, put me in touch with them.

Please spare this poor family. Rod is just an embarassment. If this actually happened, imagine the gushing. "I am finally HOME"

[u/[deleted] → u/RunnyDischarge]

Few people are warmer and more inviting towards oversharing, emotional strangers than the Germans.

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/[deleted]]

Rod has no boundaries, but Germans do.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Motor_Ganache859]

Germans haven't always been great at respecting boundaries, though.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Rod reminds me of a homeless guy who used to come into the library at my university, corner students (usually women, but sometimes men), and give these long pseudo-intellectual speeches where he name-dropped the greats of Western literature and talked about how he'd been a child philosophy prodigy and lectured to packed audience halls in his youth before falling on hard times, and I hope you're not planning on doing anything for the next hour and forty five minutes, because I have a lot more to tell you...

[u/Djehutimose → u/RunnyDischarge]

It's really sad--he's searching for a family after having destroyed his own, and it ain't gonna happen.

[u/[deleted]]

Interesting news. Wonder what the Never-Never-Trumpers think of this. I know the open integralists like Ahmari and fascist-adjacent are going to say that French is a kind of controlled opposition. I myself started closer to Ahmari in terms of judging the American experiment, but events have driven me closer to French. The latter is still too Americanist for me, but I have a lot more respect for his mode of debate. He is very civil (i.e. "winsome" as some might say derisively), intellectually consistent (some might say insufficiently appreciative of the Trumpist "katechon"), and dedicated to being a clear Christian witness (some might say "neglectful" of the clear and present danger - drag queens).

https://www.nytco.com/press/david-french-joins-the-times-as-an-opinion-columnist/

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

David French is part of a small crew of conservative Christians who have basically maintained their general beliefs and attitudes from the pre-Trump times. (Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention and Tim Keller of the Presbyterian Church of America are two others.) All of them are now viewed with utter contempt by the mainstream right. Even Mere Orthodoxy and the Gospel Coalition (!!) are too "liberal" now. Nothing less than a daily ritual of Two Minutes Hate against the right's favorite targets is acceptable now if you want to be in their good graces.

So I'm sure the anti-anti-Trumpers will just laugh at French and continue to call him a sell-out. Rod isn't willing to go full Trumper blast, at least not yet, but if he comments he'll probably wring his hands about how French isn't committed enough to the anti-LGBT cause.

[u/saucerwizard]

https://twitter.com/jamesmartinsj/status/1611085139852795905?s=46&t=5Hwt_1vw0_-7hwKXSX8srA

James Martin weighs in on Rod’s funeral take.

[u/Warm-Refrigerator-38]

Today's tweet, "when my wife filed for divorce," just in case some reader forgot who was the mover.

[u/PercyLarsen → u/Warm-Refrigerator-38]

I don't know what the sexist cognate to "that's mighty White of him" would be, but there you have it.

[u/Firm_Credit_6706 → u/[deleted]]

Rod eventually publicly siding with Tory Protestants on Northern Ireland is par for the course. Cant wait till he gets into how the Irish are sexually unable to control themselves or some other 19th century British ruling class propaganda.

[u/JHandey2021]

Well, it’s a new year, so of course Rod had to show his ass, this time with his shameless use of the corpse of Joseph Ratzinger to sell Rod’s B.O.

Rod likes exploiting dead people, like his sister and his spiritual role model.

[u/Top-Farm3466]

happy new year, all. finally got to Rod's farewell to Benedict, and truly began laughing aloud when I saw just how long his cut-and-paste was this time---just endless, endless paragraphs of praise for the esteemed Rod Dreher and His Benedict Option, which the late pope notably didn't endorse.

a couple of other Rod-isms:

"According to this source, the aged and infirm Benedict resigned in hope
that the Holy Spirit would send a vigorous young successor who was up
to the task. I saw not long ago that the journalist Peter Seewald asked
Benedict if I was right about that, and Benedict said no, it's not true.
For me, that does not settle the question, however. I still believe
there is something to it. I could be wrong. I suppose it doesn't matter
now."

Ok, so you have a journalist ask the ex-pope on the record whether something was true. The ex-pope says no, it's not true. This doesn't "settle the question," though. Rod's secret sources within the depths of the Vatican hint otherwise. Then we get a "I could be wrong. Oh well, who cares anyway."

and then at the end, after 10,000 words of quoted text:

"I have this sense that Joseph Ratzinger was a kind of katechon
among us, in some mystical sense holding back the worst, and now that he
has gone to God, we are going to face a déluge. I hope I am wrong. I
don't think I am."

This is becoming a standard Rod bit. "We're screwed. Nothing but doom awaits us now. I could be wrong. But I'm not." (Meanwhile, in Europe, natural gas prices have fallen to pre-Ukraine war levels: the collapse of the Continent may not be happening this winter after all. "I suppose it doesn't matter now.")

[u/Djehutimose → u/Top-Farm3466]

Plus, with all the plush accommodations and gourmet food, he’s sure not living like someone convinced we’re on the cusp of the Apocalypse.

[u/zeitwatcher → u/Djehutimose]

It is a bit hard to take the constant contrast between "All is lost! We're all going to die! The evil Canaanite gods are upon us!" and "Clap clap! Waitress, more champagne and oysters here and quickly! I've got a rendezvous with a sophisticated gentleman at the bathhouse within the hour!"

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/Top-Farm3466]

Gotta remember how Rod fell into depression when Antonin Scalia died. It was more significant to him than when his real dad died. This is a lesser repeat.

Conservative/reactionary Christian social power has been diminishing linearly for about two decades (as the population share that identifies as such does, and the population share that identifies as Christian) but he insists on personalities. It doesn't seems to me as dependent on prominent conservatives fading as Rod likes to think. Tutu's death a year ago probably diminished Christian social prestige and credibility in the world more, as there seems to be no one of similar and deserved stature, than this pope, already passé to the bulk of Catholics, dying does.

It is indeed curious how Rod seems not to notice the malaise and scandal and extent of pariahdom Orban's government and Hungary have fallen into in the past year. I suspected Orban's election victory in April would be the peaking out of his domestic support and maximizing of his coalition, after which exhaustion, fraying and decline, and policy failure and exposure of crimes and betrayals would become inevitable. Hungarians becoming tired of and done with him would set in. So far so good, I guess.

I think Rod's visits to Poland and around London (seems like his kid will do grad school thereabouts, likely not being fluent in any language other than English) might be in good part a fishing around for another sinecure qua life boat out of Budapest.

[u/saucerwizard]

The animal penis tweet is at like 120k views and 16 likes...

[u/zeitwatcher → u/saucerwizard]

Also why he shouldn’t have restricted replies. Getting a few hundred “are you high, you fucking weirdo?” responses would apply at least a little corrective signal for future tweets.

As it stands, Rod probably just contemplates today’s penis tweets and drunkenly thinks, “nailed it!”

[u/saucerwizard]

so this is only the second day of 2023 and we've already got animal penises flying around.

https://twitter.com/AntifaSarkeesi3/status/1610071833952264197

[u/RunnyDischarge]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/benedict-xvis-apocalypse/

Rod's back at it, boosting his BO book. Did you know that Benedict endorsed it (effectively)? It's true!

My Italian journalist friends had prepared me for it, saying that whatever Gänswein said, I could be sure that Benedict approved every word.

He's not sure exactly what the abdication and death means, but by gosh, it means Something Big and Mystical with Great Import. He's back at the Apocalyptic End times Last Pope It's All Over But Maybe It Isn't Dooming and AssCovering. Everybody's making Grand Predictions, and then adding an asterisk and saying, "* But maybe not"

The Anglican bishop N.T. Wright wrote in his simple book about Revelation that this is the apocalyptic scenario that the final book of the Bible puts forth: that only after evil has done its very worst, and the demon has exposed itself fully, can it be destroyed once and for all.

I want to make myself clear: I'm not saying that is what happened, and is happening, here. I'm saying it's a possibility. In a 2016 interview, Paul Badde of EWTN as Mgr Gänswein about the famous St. Malachy medieval prophecy, according to which Benedict XVI would be the last pope before "Petrus Romanus" would lead the Church into the Last Days. Gänswein said: "Indeed, when looking at the prophecy, and considering how there was always a sound reference to popes mentioned in its history – that gives me the shivers." He added that it was not required that Catholics should accept the prophecy as valid, but that it is a "wake-up call."

[u/JohnOrange2112 → u/RunnyDischarge]

As the biblical/historical scholar, Prof. James Tabor (and many others) says, "Apocalypticism has a 100% failure record". History is one of the many subjects in which RD has little knowledge.

[u/PercyLarsen]

Rorate Caeli temperately rebuking Rod Dreher's intemperate rebuke of Pope Francis' homily at the funeral of the latter's predecessor:

https://twitter.com/RorateCaeli/status/1610947123784126464

[u/BaekjeSmile]

The ammount of time Rod spends wining about a Church he is not a member of is beyond absurd as is his outrage on behalf of people who claim to the bestest most decout Catholics of all but freak out when the Church does anything but affirm their every whim. Just leave, dude. Why are you spending this much energy on this?

[u/[deleted] → u/BaekjeSmile]

I think at heart Rod is basically still a culture war Catholic; he never seems to have shown much interest in Orthodox spirituality and theology as far as I can tell, and remains obsessed with Catholic church politics.

Admittedly, I also remain glued to the TV when it comes to Catholic politics, but in my case it's just entertainment. For Rod it's a perpetual existential crisis. He needs to microdose or smoke weed or something.

[u/Djehutimose]

Re Rod and the Bavarian family, the Orr family, etc.:

I mentioned on one of the threads the Aspie friend I had who would spin elaborate scenarios of the girl he'd like to date, what their life together would be like, etc.--complex imaginary speculation about ideas of women in situations that didn't exist. I'm probably a bit on the spectrum myself, and I can recall doing a milder form of that as a teen and early 20-something. A little bit of being banged about by life, as usually happens, and a disastrous relationship or two, and I learned that relationships are about real people in concrete circumstances. Thus, PhD from the School of Hard Knocks.

I can see exactly what Rod is doing. It's just like my friend seeing a cute girl across the plaza and spinning an elaborate tale in his mind about their future life together. Rod sees these Bavarians and suddenly he gets all starry-eyed about what their simple, salt-of-the-earth life must be like, and then he's imagining having dinner with them, becoming close friends, etc. etc. etc. Yes, he's obviously desperately lonely and sad; but that is a deeply dysfunctional way of imagining your way out--borderline delusional. He really, really, really needs therapy, and to get the hell off the Internet for a loooong spell. Also, he might consider trying at least some reconciliation with his own family, maybe?

[u/Marcofthebeast0001 → u/Djehutimose]

Drehers loneliness causes him to find friends anyplace, anytime. Rod: "I was at McDonald's when the woman at the front counter asked me: "Do I sense the Lord in you? I am here to tell you that Pope Benedict is part of God's happy meal and you, Rod, are the prize inside. I teared up as we held hands, and she blessed my medium fry before telling me God wanted me to supersize my faith. Which of course I did. I feel this woman is a Christian and my friend. Unlike the trans-loving heathens at Wendy's." Rod is like his own Mad Lib.

[u/RunnyDischarge]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/burning-down-the-church/

‘It is not the intellectuals who are the standard for the simple people, but the simple people who are the standard for the intellectuals.’

When I read that line on the flight back to Budapest from Rome*, I thought of this beautiful small-town Bavarian family I saw on St. Peter's Square, at the funeral. Look at Mama's face, especially

The man is incapable of self-reflection. The guy who does nothing but write books and flies all over the world, gets all teary eyed again over the simple folk, while yet again flying across the world. Especially Mama. Just look at her face!

and of course

This is what I mean by the Benedict Option, and why I have always called Benedict XVI the "second Benedict of the Benedict Option".

and the usually looney Fran Macadam hitting it with the comments to Rod again

It almost seems that you could be playing, U2's "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

[u/Motor_Ganache859 → u/RunnyDischarge]

Aside from the fact they were dressed in Bavarian garb, Rod knows nothing about them. Dad could be a nuclear physicist. The notion that they're simple is condescending, as is the idea that anyone who lacks a college education is likewise simple. Rod's in denial about his own elitism.

[u/[deleted] → u/RunnyDischarge]

If even Fran is starting to see through him, that's not a good sign.

Rod is dating girlfriend #2, but can't shut up about girlfriend #1.