Dear Everyone: I'm very busy with many things and so usually avoid jumping into the discussions in the comments on my posts. But I want you all to know that I'm thrilled you've taken to having conversations and respectful debates about the issues I write about. You're making this a real community. I also wanted you to know that I follow along with and read everything.
You're not the only one wondering what happened to Rod. There's a whole Reddit subthread devoted to former readers speculating about what caused him to go off the rails. I started reading Rod soon after he moved to Louisiana. While I didn't agree with many of his views, at least that Rod was intellectually curious and willing to engage with readers who challenged his viewpoints. I found his writings on Dante moving and got a lot from them.
Somewhere around the time of the Benedict Option, Rod's views started hardening and the "mean girl" aspects of his personality metastasized. His obsession with homosexuality, transexuality, and wokeness took center stage, and his blog posts became predictable. His substack, where he writes about more personal matters and about his project on enchantment, shows aspects of the old Rod, but it's become impossible for me to reconcile that guy with the nasty, misogynistic guy on AmCon and Twitter, who embraces authoritarian leaders and an ends-justifies-the-means mentality. He's become a shill for Orban and Putin and what he sees as their manly virtues.
Rod's writings on Substack make clear he believes that, having been exiled (and yes, that's the term he uses) from Baton Rogue, he's now on a mission from G-d to help save Christianity from the libs. I'm sure he'd embrace being labeled as a prophet. Sadly, I think it's more likely he's on the verge of some kind of mental breakdown.
Jesus said when we are weighed down like this to pray for our enemies, turn the other cheek, and to seek first His kingdom which is not of this world. I have never - in 7 years of reading Rod - seen these ethics in his writings or conduct. It’s just extremely thin Heidegger kulturkampf gruel in a never ending cycle.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger lest you give the devil a foothold; perfect love casts out fear. There’s no coincidence to me that anger and fear are singled out as spiritually devastating in the Bible. Rod - and his fans -would do well to realize everything he writes is tinged or soaked with anger or fear. I write this not to bury him, but in genuine hope he can get help for what seems to me to be severe depression and to let his anger and fear go.
If Abraham, who was of Ur, could plead with God to spare the foreign pagans of Sodom and Gomorrah, surely Rod could spare a little Christian charity for the pagans of his own homeland?
Sep 17, 2022·edited Sep 17, 2022Liked by Damon Linker
Firstly, thank you, Mr. Linker, for the most unpunditesque humility you display (I hope you don't get thrown out of the union), especially but by no means only in this post. Specifically re economics - that you know you don't enough about economics to know whom you should trust about the topic.
Not only am I among those who learned a lot from reading Rod Dreher in the Olden Daze, I first became aware of you via him (it would have been perhaps 2006 or so? pretty sure you were at Beliefnet at the time).
In honor of your previous status as a Christian (or your heritage as a descendant of Judaism), the chain of, err, prophecy went
Sullivan => Douthat => Daniel Larison =>Dreher => you.
It sounds similar to the essays he wrote about wokeness and gender a few years ago, where he'd quote long screeds from anonymous professors and doctors who wrote to him of the coming Bad Times. Some of the things he brought forward (gender theory in medical school overriding a patient's anatomy) have been covered by other journalists like Jesse Singal, who I think does a good job objectively covering the gender beat, so not crazy, but others---hoo boy. The whole "I can't tell you who told me this, because he fears for his job/life, but...." and then proceeds with a long tale in which the narrator is persecuted by the Wokesters or Teh gayz or the "transgenders."
I stopped reading a couple of years ago because the formula kept setting off my BS detector. I couldn't tell if he was making stuff up, or if he'd become a magnet for every middle aged malcontent who felt picked on at work. His complete willingness to spread pretty sensational accusations without any shred of evidence that these stories were true both concerned and offended me. His writing at points bordered on hysteria. As a Christian, I worry that he's given into the sin of despair, which as a former Catholic Damon you'd recognize is a pretty big deal in terms of sin. I'm definitely on the progressive Christian side, but despair seems to fit his state of mind better than anything else I can think of, and I genuinely worry about Rod's mind and soul. The recent announcement about the end of his marriage seems to have made things worse--sometimes I wonder if he's fallen into the embrace of the authoritarian Orbanista community to make up for losing his family? He's estranged from his family of origin and it seems weird that he's in Europe and his kids are here (as far as I know). Hard to be a present dad when you live on a different continent.
Anyway--thank you for writing this. Rod--if you are reading the comments I pray for you and hope you get some support and help. You seem to be in a lot of spiritual pain.
Looks like a lot of people are familiar with Rod, I only have a distant acquaintanceship with his work and tweets. I bow to y’all’s knowledge.
At the risk of sounding like who I actually am, a conservative Christian, I get part of what Damon says he’s saying. And quite frankly, my flavor of Christians have been saying the same thing since I’ve been a teen. The wild-eyed wing has always been about what is now called prepping. The televangelist Jim Bakker even sells prep stuff or so I’ve been told. There’s enough of it on Xn TV that every once in a while my MIL wants to stock up on goods. (Don’t get me started on the fear-mongering done to old ladies by Xn TV. I can’t wait for the perpetrators to try to explain that to God.)
RW Christians desire the apocalypse because that means Jesus will be coming back soon. I think they take this from the book of Revelations 22:20 (NLT) where Jesus says “Yes, I am coming soon.” And John, the writer of Revelations seems pretty pleased.”Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Confession: yes, I’d like Jesus to come soon, too, but the Apocalypse, not so much.)
Here’s where I lose the plot. In my understanding there is a real distinction between the enemy (Satan, Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil -- whatever one’s faith tradition calls it) and our fellow human beings and there seems to be more and more confusion about that. Sean Feucht quoted Ron DeSantis as substituting the word enemy (as identified above) with liberals in a key Bible passage. This confounds me as in the Bible there is a real distinction on how to pro-actively love our fellow beings versus resisting the strategies of the devil. The full armor of God is to resist a spiritual enemy not a fellow traveler.
Hmmm, maybe it’s not me who has lost the plot. And maybe the strategies of the devil have been more successful with the rad-trads then they realize.
Rod wrote in March of 2020 that Covid would cause a Great Depression, readers thanked him as they pulled their savings out of the market, as it turned out, it was the greatest buying opportunity in our generation
I started to read him -- RD-- a few years ago but everything is so tinged with apocalyptic hysteria .... and now he’s so head over heels in love with Orban -- he just seems to have lost any sense of judgment and perspective.
Damon, don’t ever think there’s such a thing as giving too much attention to the ongoing radicalization of so many of our fellow citizens! I’m absolutely fascinated by it, when I’m not terrified and hiding under the bed. In my case, this study of humans I used to know and respect is the replacement for the conversation, interaction, enjoyment and gatherings with humans I used to know and respect. But 2015-16 poisoned all of that and then the pandemic sealed the deal. My trust is broken. Yet I have little energy left for anger or combat. I simply want to see and try to understand, maybe find ways to help in small ways. I find your observations and thought patterns unbelievably helpful and profitable in increasing my understanding and calming frequent bouts of hysteria caused by the marinade of lunacy in which we are swimming these days. Engaging one’s mind in analysis is, for me, a good way to disrupt unhealthy, self destructive emotions that help no one and only lead to despair.
As for Rod. Yeah, I used to relate to him and enjoy him years ago. But it’s clear he has made a choice now to throw himself in with this new crowd of recycled, same-old deceivers and powermongers - where his every impulse will be cheered and lifted to new heights. Heh. Out of one side of his mouth he talks isolation, a monk’s life and prayerful contemplation. But he is no more immune than any other mere mortal to escaping The Law - which dominates his theological understanding. Adulation, the warm embrace of a mob, traveling to exotic locales to mix with masters of the universe, telling fantastical stories over drinks & candlelight (especially during a mid-life crisis!)… all this must come as quite a temptation for a weary, failed monk.
You’ve extended your hand and words of caution like a true friend. That is a kindness and an example to follow.
Since we seem to have a bunch of ex-Dreher readers here, I'd like to ask both Our Host and open the floor for nominations for the closest current equivalent to the Dreher of his early TAC days (say up to 2014?) - not so much politically or theologically, but tone and engagement. David French is the closest example I can currently think of, but maybe someone whose political profile is lower than his so that the blog is not quite so taken over by anti-Trump and anti-anti-Trump arguments - a bit more applied theology and less short term politics? That might be unrealistic to ask. (n.b. I think the world of David French, but the comments section there is inevitably higher temperature).
Mr Dreher might pay some attention to Jonah as presented in his Book. Even when he finally obeys his marching-orders and preaches to Nineveh, Jonah has no desire that he be listened-to and believed and the foreign pagans (as 'Donny from Queens' put it elsewhere here for the people of the Cities of the Plain) of Nineveh saved, and his boss takes issue with that.
…which makes me wonder: perhaps Mr Dreher's intemperance is born of not only expecting that he will not really affect things, but of by now actually not wanting to be heard and to be believed. He _wants_ Nineveh destroyed, so why bother crafting a message that might be more effective and distinguishing between preaching and venting?
(Elsewhere, here, I speculate that he may have been misled by the sheer pleasure of self-righteous anger.)
I created, so far as I know, the term 'Lying Fact' to describe what at least some Young Earth Creationists think of the fossil record, those who consider it as having been 'planted' by Satan (to lead us astray) or the LORD (to proof our faith).
The continued failure of the U.S., and especially of Socialist!Atheist! (except, now, for Hungary and Poland) Europe to suddenly turn to terrible hellscapes that would punish the libs and, less importantly, show us all the errors of our ways and the way toward righteousness is to some another Lying Fact. This system which they believe has utterly rejected Truth, that is their opinions and views, _can_not_ work at all, any evidence to the contrary is mere fact contradicting Truth, and such Gates of Hell can not endure.
I get the point of this blog, but weeks after Sam Harris said he has no problem cheating elections with Big Tech censorship to defeat the other side, and Biden declared any opposition to his policies is illegitimate extremism, picking on Rod Dreher for his own hopes of a "Great Reset" in the anti-WEF direction sounds petty.
You don't have to read far right sources to see the trucker's protest in Canada (brutally crushed by the way), protests in the Netherlands and next week's elections in Italy to see that people are rising up against the Establishment. And you don't have to be an economist to see the Fed's coming additional interest rate hike (reportedly 75 to 100 basis points) in the face of rapidly rising inflation to be alarmed at what the future holds.
Dear Everyone: I'm very busy with many things and so usually avoid jumping into the discussions in the comments on my posts. But I want you all to know that I'm thrilled you've taken to having conversations and respectful debates about the issues I write about. You're making this a real community. I also wanted you to know that I follow along with and read everything.
You're not the only one wondering what happened to Rod. There's a whole Reddit subthread devoted to former readers speculating about what caused him to go off the rails. I started reading Rod soon after he moved to Louisiana. While I didn't agree with many of his views, at least that Rod was intellectually curious and willing to engage with readers who challenged his viewpoints. I found his writings on Dante moving and got a lot from them.
Somewhere around the time of the Benedict Option, Rod's views started hardening and the "mean girl" aspects of his personality metastasized. His obsession with homosexuality, transexuality, and wokeness took center stage, and his blog posts became predictable. His substack, where he writes about more personal matters and about his project on enchantment, shows aspects of the old Rod, but it's become impossible for me to reconcile that guy with the nasty, misogynistic guy on AmCon and Twitter, who embraces authoritarian leaders and an ends-justifies-the-means mentality. He's become a shill for Orban and Putin and what he sees as their manly virtues.
Rod's writings on Substack make clear he believes that, having been exiled (and yes, that's the term he uses) from Baton Rogue, he's now on a mission from G-d to help save Christianity from the libs. I'm sure he'd embrace being labeled as a prophet. Sadly, I think it's more likely he's on the verge of some kind of mental breakdown.
Jesus said when we are weighed down like this to pray for our enemies, turn the other cheek, and to seek first His kingdom which is not of this world. I have never - in 7 years of reading Rod - seen these ethics in his writings or conduct. It’s just extremely thin Heidegger kulturkampf gruel in a never ending cycle.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger lest you give the devil a foothold; perfect love casts out fear. There’s no coincidence to me that anger and fear are singled out as spiritually devastating in the Bible. Rod - and his fans -would do well to realize everything he writes is tinged or soaked with anger or fear. I write this not to bury him, but in genuine hope he can get help for what seems to me to be severe depression and to let his anger and fear go.
If Abraham, who was of Ur, could plead with God to spare the foreign pagans of Sodom and Gomorrah, surely Rod could spare a little Christian charity for the pagans of his own homeland?
Firstly, thank you, Mr. Linker, for the most unpunditesque humility you display (I hope you don't get thrown out of the union), especially but by no means only in this post. Specifically re economics - that you know you don't enough about economics to know whom you should trust about the topic.
Not only am I among those who learned a lot from reading Rod Dreher in the Olden Daze, I first became aware of you via him (it would have been perhaps 2006 or so? pretty sure you were at Beliefnet at the time).
In honor of your previous status as a Christian (or your heritage as a descendant of Judaism), the chain of, err, prophecy went
Sullivan => Douthat => Daniel Larison =>Dreher => you.
It sounds similar to the essays he wrote about wokeness and gender a few years ago, where he'd quote long screeds from anonymous professors and doctors who wrote to him of the coming Bad Times. Some of the things he brought forward (gender theory in medical school overriding a patient's anatomy) have been covered by other journalists like Jesse Singal, who I think does a good job objectively covering the gender beat, so not crazy, but others---hoo boy. The whole "I can't tell you who told me this, because he fears for his job/life, but...." and then proceeds with a long tale in which the narrator is persecuted by the Wokesters or Teh gayz or the "transgenders."
I stopped reading a couple of years ago because the formula kept setting off my BS detector. I couldn't tell if he was making stuff up, or if he'd become a magnet for every middle aged malcontent who felt picked on at work. His complete willingness to spread pretty sensational accusations without any shred of evidence that these stories were true both concerned and offended me. His writing at points bordered on hysteria. As a Christian, I worry that he's given into the sin of despair, which as a former Catholic Damon you'd recognize is a pretty big deal in terms of sin. I'm definitely on the progressive Christian side, but despair seems to fit his state of mind better than anything else I can think of, and I genuinely worry about Rod's mind and soul. The recent announcement about the end of his marriage seems to have made things worse--sometimes I wonder if he's fallen into the embrace of the authoritarian Orbanista community to make up for losing his family? He's estranged from his family of origin and it seems weird that he's in Europe and his kids are here (as far as I know). Hard to be a present dad when you live on a different continent.
Anyway--thank you for writing this. Rod--if you are reading the comments I pray for you and hope you get some support and help. You seem to be in a lot of spiritual pain.
Looks like a lot of people are familiar with Rod, I only have a distant acquaintanceship with his work and tweets. I bow to y’all’s knowledge.
At the risk of sounding like who I actually am, a conservative Christian, I get part of what Damon says he’s saying. And quite frankly, my flavor of Christians have been saying the same thing since I’ve been a teen. The wild-eyed wing has always been about what is now called prepping. The televangelist Jim Bakker even sells prep stuff or so I’ve been told. There’s enough of it on Xn TV that every once in a while my MIL wants to stock up on goods. (Don’t get me started on the fear-mongering done to old ladies by Xn TV. I can’t wait for the perpetrators to try to explain that to God.)
RW Christians desire the apocalypse because that means Jesus will be coming back soon. I think they take this from the book of Revelations 22:20 (NLT) where Jesus says “Yes, I am coming soon.” And John, the writer of Revelations seems pretty pleased.”Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Confession: yes, I’d like Jesus to come soon, too, but the Apocalypse, not so much.)
Here’s where I lose the plot. In my understanding there is a real distinction between the enemy (Satan, Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil -- whatever one’s faith tradition calls it) and our fellow human beings and there seems to be more and more confusion about that. Sean Feucht quoted Ron DeSantis as substituting the word enemy (as identified above) with liberals in a key Bible passage. This confounds me as in the Bible there is a real distinction on how to pro-actively love our fellow beings versus resisting the strategies of the devil. The full armor of God is to resist a spiritual enemy not a fellow traveler.
Hmmm, maybe it’s not me who has lost the plot. And maybe the strategies of the devil have been more successful with the rad-trads then they realize.
Rod wrote in March of 2020 that Covid would cause a Great Depression, readers thanked him as they pulled their savings out of the market, as it turned out, it was the greatest buying opportunity in our generation
I started to read him -- RD-- a few years ago but everything is so tinged with apocalyptic hysteria .... and now he’s so head over heels in love with Orban -- he just seems to have lost any sense of judgment and perspective.
Y'know, it occurred to me I've seen this column before. Remember RD's post "Eric Metaxas’s American Apocalypse" (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/eric-metaxas-trump-bloodshed-american-apocalypse-live-not-by-lies/)?
Rod says of Eric Metaxas: "He knows because … he just knows, is all".
Sounds like someone else I could name.
Damon, don’t ever think there’s such a thing as giving too much attention to the ongoing radicalization of so many of our fellow citizens! I’m absolutely fascinated by it, when I’m not terrified and hiding under the bed. In my case, this study of humans I used to know and respect is the replacement for the conversation, interaction, enjoyment and gatherings with humans I used to know and respect. But 2015-16 poisoned all of that and then the pandemic sealed the deal. My trust is broken. Yet I have little energy left for anger or combat. I simply want to see and try to understand, maybe find ways to help in small ways. I find your observations and thought patterns unbelievably helpful and profitable in increasing my understanding and calming frequent bouts of hysteria caused by the marinade of lunacy in which we are swimming these days. Engaging one’s mind in analysis is, for me, a good way to disrupt unhealthy, self destructive emotions that help no one and only lead to despair.
As for Rod. Yeah, I used to relate to him and enjoy him years ago. But it’s clear he has made a choice now to throw himself in with this new crowd of recycled, same-old deceivers and powermongers - where his every impulse will be cheered and lifted to new heights. Heh. Out of one side of his mouth he talks isolation, a monk’s life and prayerful contemplation. But he is no more immune than any other mere mortal to escaping The Law - which dominates his theological understanding. Adulation, the warm embrace of a mob, traveling to exotic locales to mix with masters of the universe, telling fantastical stories over drinks & candlelight (especially during a mid-life crisis!)… all this must come as quite a temptation for a weary, failed monk.
You’ve extended your hand and words of caution like a true friend. That is a kindness and an example to follow.
there’s a wish for cataclysm. read strauss’s lecture on german nihilism.
Since we seem to have a bunch of ex-Dreher readers here, I'd like to ask both Our Host and open the floor for nominations for the closest current equivalent to the Dreher of his early TAC days (say up to 2014?) - not so much politically or theologically, but tone and engagement. David French is the closest example I can currently think of, but maybe someone whose political profile is lower than his so that the blog is not quite so taken over by anti-Trump and anti-anti-Trump arguments - a bit more applied theology and less short term politics? That might be unrealistic to ask. (n.b. I think the world of David French, but the comments section there is inevitably higher temperature).
Mr Dreher might pay some attention to Jonah as presented in his Book. Even when he finally obeys his marching-orders and preaches to Nineveh, Jonah has no desire that he be listened-to and believed and the foreign pagans (as 'Donny from Queens' put it elsewhere here for the people of the Cities of the Plain) of Nineveh saved, and his boss takes issue with that.
…which makes me wonder: perhaps Mr Dreher's intemperance is born of not only expecting that he will not really affect things, but of by now actually not wanting to be heard and to be believed. He _wants_ Nineveh destroyed, so why bother crafting a message that might be more effective and distinguishing between preaching and venting?
(Elsewhere, here, I speculate that he may have been misled by the sheer pleasure of self-righteous anger.)
I created, so far as I know, the term 'Lying Fact' to describe what at least some Young Earth Creationists think of the fossil record, those who consider it as having been 'planted' by Satan (to lead us astray) or the LORD (to proof our faith).
The continued failure of the U.S., and especially of Socialist!Atheist! (except, now, for Hungary and Poland) Europe to suddenly turn to terrible hellscapes that would punish the libs and, less importantly, show us all the errors of our ways and the way toward righteousness is to some another Lying Fact. This system which they believe has utterly rejected Truth, that is their opinions and views, _can_not_ work at all, any evidence to the contrary is mere fact contradicting Truth, and such Gates of Hell can not endure.

I get the point of this blog, but weeks after Sam Harris said he has no problem cheating elections with Big Tech censorship to defeat the other side, and Biden declared any opposition to his policies is illegitimate extremism, picking on Rod Dreher for his own hopes of a "Great Reset" in the anti-WEF direction sounds petty.
You don't have to read far right sources to see the trucker's protest in Canada (brutally crushed by the way), protests in the Netherlands and next week's elections in Italy to see that people are rising up against the Establishment. And you don't have to be an economist to see the Fed's coming additional interest rate hike (reportedly 75 to 100 basis points) in the face of rapidly rising inflation to be alarmed at what the future holds.