This is a solid take, I’d say. Me too, there have been times Rod’s pissed me off with his flailing (and sorry, it often *is* flailing), but although his readings in any given period may well be off target, his compass is good. Short term, it spins erratically, but longer term, he proves prescient on essentials.
Those who diss him regarding what happened to his marriage, or his move to Orthodoxy, or his working for a time in Hungary—well, they’re just punks. Rod has been through the wringer, and keeps going.
Wanna say Rod’s a sellout or shill? A writer who’s a sellout doesn’t openly criticize his friend in the White House. Rather, he holds back, knowing how he can ride that connection going forward.
Rod, right or wrong, sees a threat in JD’s refusal to denounce the Carlson/groyper stupidities. He doesn’t hush up what he sees.
Let’s see these rightist kids reach age 60, tired out by life, and still have that kind of spine.
As I see it there are about 4 plans available to the Right:
- keep voting Trump until the Rapture, banging your walker on the floor and shouting at Fox on the TV while you slurp your meds down with your puréed sweetcorn
- trust Rod, Tucker, and Joe Kent: Vance really is the Chosen One. He’s definitely not a reprogrammable android owned and operated by Peter Thiel
- back Fuentes and burn it all down. Then recreate the GOP as ass-kicking nationalists
- do nothing and watch Rubio get crowned as the Israel-approved heir apparent. Get destroyed in 26 and 28 by the DSA-led anti-Israel insurgency
People asking if the Groypers have a plan (since Rod is obsessed by them). If you only watch hostile clips of Fuentes you could be forgiven for thinking there’s no plan. If you let him articulate his argument, the plan is something like:
Step one is to destroy the Republican Party in 26 to put Trump and his lackeys in jail.
Then primary any candidate who won’t renounce Israel, war and immigration.
Create a generational change in the Republican Party and finish the job Trump failed to do: turn the party into a nationalist party.
Then use all levers of the state ruthlessly to destroy the opposition. Just like the Dems have always done.
That is the short term plan. The long term plan copies the Left: infiltrate all institutions of power.
I think Dreher's core moral axiom is the fundamentall goodness and rightness of the Jewish community. That's why antisemitism panics him. He cannot conceive that the antisemites might be right.
I think this is correct although I would say he suffers from the Boomer and Gen X syndrome of having anti-antisemitism programmed into his core moral identity, such that challenging it feels like the threat of personal moral collapse.
The funny thing about 'no enemies to the right' is the original form, 'no enemies to the left', was said by the Russian Menshevik (moderate), Alexander Kerensky.
Now, how did that turn out for the Russians? For the Russian Left except for Stalin?
It's funny because I'm not religious at all while Rod is. In many ways, I'm the post-Christian, post-liberal right-wing radical he warns everyone about. LOL
I greatly enjoy reading Rod. I can really relate to him as we are both about the same age and remember what it was like to be an American 40-50 years ago. I disagree with him about Trump, but I don’t expect I will agree with him about everything. I also agree that he tends to be too credulous about what he reads in the NY Slime. His principals have been consistent for the 10 or more years I have been reading him. He has always rejected the idea of “no enemies to the right”, as well as hatred of the Jews. He is absolutely correct that overthrowing everything would destroy most of us and make things much worse than they are now. I love his book recommendations & his writing about UFOs. He has helped teach me that much of life is a mystery that we will never understand.
I did decide to let my subscription lapse, but not because he’s too mean to groypers. I think people who are online tend to exaggerate the importance of Fuentes and the groypers. My main criticism of Rod is his utterly credulous irrationalism. I mean, he was always a bit loopy, but it used to be funny. Now he’s gotten downright crazy with the demons and UFO stuff, and Tucker, who sleeps with four dogs in his bed, telling us about demonic attacks leaving scratches. (I have two demons who sometimes leave scratches on my body; their names are Dagny and Dominique, and they appear in the guise of cats.) Tucker’s constant complaints about the Jews are, according to Rod, due to the haunted woods behind his house in Maine. He should have gotten an exorcist! I suspect Qatari money is a lot more salient than anything supernatural
He was always a bit nuts on these things, but it used to be funny. It’s gone beyond that now. What broke it for me was his endorsement of the people who claim they can use facilitated communication (under a rebrand) to channel spiritual insights from nonverbal autistic people. Facilitated Communication isn’t a harmless haunted chair; it’s a practice that has been used to produce false claims of sexual assault and for that matter to justify sexual assault.
As to Vance, I agree, after Vance’s book, that “turning” on him is the right move. Vance has clearly been seduced by the Catholic Integralist crew, who propose something like Iran, except with Catholicism substituting for Shia Islam. How this is ever to be arranged given the religious makeup of the United States is never explained, but apparently theocracy is just the ticket. It’s ironic that, when Kennedy was running, some opponents claimed he’d do the bidding of the Pope. And now JD Vance wants us to do the bidding of a long-dead Pope.
Vance now rejects free markets and adopts the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren view of the economic sphere. If I wanted a communist, I’d just vote for the DSA candidate.
Like I said, I don't share a lot of Rod's views. I skip the parts of his newsletter where he talks UFOs and the paranormal. I consult scientists like Michael Shermer for that stuff. But the idea he's any kind of problem, any kind of drag on the Right, is the Right basically scapegoating Rod. They have a tendency to turn on the 20% who do 80% of the work. They rag on Harmeet Dhillon being being Indian, despite the fact she fought harder for Trump than anyone else. They even got on Chris Rufo for something so retarded, I forgot what it was.
The Right really does treat it like a good ol' boys club.
Harmeet Dillon is a hard worker and a good lawyer. She is also interpersonally rude for no good reason. Which is a reason to dislike her as a person, but not a critique at a policy level.
As for ignoring Rod’s wacky obsessions, it does get harder to do as it takes a greater and greater share of his output. And I do tire of his doomerism combined with constant refrains about the necessity of a return to Christianity. It’s just too much.
I've followed Dreher for years. Never met him or anything, but been reading him for about two decades now.
At root, Dreher just comes off as afraid to act as if the things he said were true.
His allegiance to David French is a great example. Yes, I get that he has a personal connection to French. But he's allowed that personal connection to blind him to the real perniciousness and indeed outright viciousness (in every sense of that word!) that French has come to embody. Dreher thinks of French as a friend, but French consistently acts as an enemy. Yet when other people point that out, Dreher consistently comes to his "friend's" defense.
Does that make Dreher an enemy too? No, I don't think so. But it does make him an unreliable friend. He's in the same category as so many people of his generation and those older than him. He may be willing to call out problems when he sees them, but he opposes almost every course of action that might plausibly improve said problems.
That makes his obsession with groyperism, antisemitism, etc., very difficult to credit. Sure, those things are bad. Granted. But those things wouldn't be nearly the problems they are now if guys that Dreher consistently defends had behaved better.
"Dreher just comes off as afraid to act as if the things he said were true."
I agree, and I think this is because, while Rod's a catastrophizer he's also one of the most optimistic people you'll ever find. He knows what time it is culturally, but he also knows his hope is not in princes or culture or men, but in Christ. This makes him "conservative" in the classic Hobbesian sense, and thus unwilling to act dramatically based on his knowledge. (And while I disagree with him, he may well be correct about that.)
More like "unwilling to act at all", much like the majority of Anglosphere leadership cadres his age and older.
The "hope is not in princes. . ." etc., line, deployed the way you're deploying it here, is just a pious-sounding way of justifying inaction and cowardice.
God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites. But God worked through Moses in bringing salvation to his people. Specifically, God commanded Moses to 1) tell the Israelites to go forward, and 2) stretch out his hand over the sea. He was God's chosen instrument for that time and place, the means by which God carried out his will. For Moses to sit on his butt and say, "No, I'm not going to do anything, our hope has to be in God!" would have been disobedient.
None of us today are Moses. But lots of us are fathers, church leaders, holders of public office, etc. Refusing to take action in defense of those for whom one is responsible is a cowardly abdication of that responsibility. Appealing to "hope not in princes" makes that worse, not better.
I honestly wish he'd quit defending David French. Once was enough. But it's also not up to us to tell him how to treat his friends.
As for "unreliable friend," Rod doesn't make politics part of his personality, the beginning and the end of his entire existence. Neither do I. So I reject that framing entirely. One look at the Left and you see what happens with people who make ideology central to their personhood. They get away with it only because America is such a liberal society.
Dreher is French's "friend" in a strictly personal sense.
I characterize Dreher as an unreliable "friend" in the Schmittian sense.
But since you mention it, a lot of Dreher's problems can be said to arise, far from "mak[ing] politics part of his personality," but from letting his personality, and his personal commitments, dictate his perspective on politics.
Like, seriously, if he wants to be kind to French, he's allowed to do that. Everybody's got people they're close to who beclown themselves. But the way to do that is privately. To simply not engage with the public criticism voluntarily, and when pressed, simply say "French is my friend; I don't want to talk about it."
Instead, he winds up defending not only French, but French's perspective. Which Dreher then winds up adopting, at least in part. He's so sympathetic to French as an individual that he can't help but be sympathetic to the things French says and does.
Which is an awfully feminine way of going about things, come to think of it. Fits with the whole "emotionally incontinent" bit.
Dreher is less taking politics personally and more making his personality his politics.
I suppose, like Patriot Front, whatever the man may be his meme has escaped him. From the deeper right commentators I got the impression of him as a political Anthony Bourdain. Once well respected, but now people just shake their head and expect a final social-clout suicide.
Well, I just subscribed to him, thanks to you, I didn't even know about him. Free, of course, I'm on social security, and what extra income I do have I use to help a deserving Zoomer.
But I read a LOT, and say very little. If the man gives me information, and reason to think, good enough. I've learned people are arguing about the "truth" constantly, and it's not only NOT "somewhere between" all of them, it's usually like a giant buck deer, watching all the hunters beat the bushes while it's resting in the shade on the next mountain. It's definitely a "humorous, yet tragic" situation. 🙄😏🤣
Rod's worth the money. In the beginning (12 years ago), Rod and TAC pulled me away from my libertarianism. Now Rod keeps me from sliding too far into Christian nationalism. He's changed over that time too, but has always gives me reason to think.
Rod has lost me, and I used to be a BIG fan. Even led a Live Not By Lies study.
But this year his typical post is quoting the NYT and the Atlantic and smearing Trump. And I let him know more than once that I didn't appreciate it. I finally got fed and am letting my subscription expire.
I do agree that targeting his divorce is a low blow. We don't know what he went through so it is best not to presume about that.
Rod does that again and again. I don't take it personally, but it pisses me off that he sides with the NYT etc. against Trump. Plus I don't think Trump gets nearly enough credit, including from you.
Trump doesn't get nearly enough criticism from the Right, either. They hold him to such a pathetically low standard, therefore failing to be honest about him.
I think history has a chance to be kinder to Trump. Even then, I think he'll be remembered only about as well as Boris Yeltsin is remembered in Russia today.
I had a chance to spend part of a day with Rod several years ago, even saw him through his first Evangelical church service. He truly is the most merry doomer you will ever find.
I have lots of criticism of his equation of racist authoritarianism on Left and Right, some of which I've shared on his own stack. But he's one of very few online people I would "go have a beer with" (and I don't even drink.)
To those who want to write him off though. Benedict Option: 5 years ahead of its time. Live Not By Lies: 3 years ahead of its time. The rise of the UFO thing: predicted it 2 years ahead. He's had a few misses as well (2023: "Europe's going to freeze to death w/o Russian gas!") but he's got a better track record of predicting the future than most.
Rod does say, quite bluntly, that if he had to choose, he'd pick right-wing authoritarianism every time. But he's not glib about how awful it'd be, either.
Rod's a cultural guy. Politics is downstream of culture. That's why he has a good sense for where things are headed. Stuff like "EUROPE GONNA FREEZE!" is attributable to his susceptibility to doomerism. Ironically, what actually happened is "EUROPE GONNA COOK!" This is why it pays to believe in science: the climate activists weren't wrong on that.
For several hours. I sat next to him at church. We talked quite a bit at lunch. It was at a small event in Sacramento just pre-COVID. 60-80 people over 3 days, so lots of time.
I agree. Rod is a culture guy (really a religion guy) and you're really not. Your focus is more practical, and that makes the two of you great complements to each other as writers.
Pretty sure I found your substack through Rod. He definitely defaults to rather "boomer con" takes, and is way too reflexively trusting of mainstream media. Though he's said several times that while the groypers or whatever et al don't have power yet, he's trying to avoid the right in 10 years becoming what the left is now because no one really tried to put the brakes on their crazies. Maybe he's right, but also maybe the people saying he's being too conservative (not in the political sense) are right. Honestly I've lost a lot of interest in politics these days, I mostly stick around for when he writes about what he refers to as "the woo."
As an older person he's going to be less disposed to radicalism. Honestly, some of the people of his generation who call for radicalism, like Charles Haywood, are cringe-worthy.
There's a definite generational gap, something Rod is constantly acknowledging (he often says something to the effect of "us olds just don't get it"). I wish he engaged more in the comments, though I doubt he has the time (his responses are often very short and IMO come off as written quickly and reflexively). The format isn't really helpful for deep discussion anyway I suppose.
I recently binged a podcast called "Roots of Everything" (I've had to drive a lot lately) and he had an interesting series on pop culture. Essentially the exaggerated generational gaps in culture with each generation essentially rebelling against the previous has done a lot to fragment our society.
Even after meeting him, I still find it hard to communicate with him regularly because he has such a large social circle, he's constantly working, and he has so many people vying for his attention. I'm sure he gets tired of talking to people all the time, too.
I spoke several essays ago about how ridiculous it is for right-wing commentators like Auron MacIntyre to be all but calling for civil war. MacIntyre isn't old, but violence isn't his thing, either. If a major civil war popped off, he'd be one of the first people the Left go after. I'm not saying we should live in fear of the Left, but I also think a lot of these right-wing commentators and influencers need a strong dose of reality injected into them.
I think that's all Rod's trying to do. He just wants a sane Right. You can't really argue that.
This is a solid take, I’d say. Me too, there have been times Rod’s pissed me off with his flailing (and sorry, it often *is* flailing), but although his readings in any given period may well be off target, his compass is good. Short term, it spins erratically, but longer term, he proves prescient on essentials.
Those who diss him regarding what happened to his marriage, or his move to Orthodoxy, or his working for a time in Hungary—well, they’re just punks. Rod has been through the wringer, and keeps going.
Wanna say Rod’s a sellout or shill? A writer who’s a sellout doesn’t openly criticize his friend in the White House. Rather, he holds back, knowing how he can ride that connection going forward.
Rod, right or wrong, sees a threat in JD’s refusal to denounce the Carlson/groyper stupidities. He doesn’t hush up what he sees.
Let’s see these rightist kids reach age 60, tired out by life, and still have that kind of spine.
As I see it there are about 4 plans available to the Right:
- keep voting Trump until the Rapture, banging your walker on the floor and shouting at Fox on the TV while you slurp your meds down with your puréed sweetcorn
- trust Rod, Tucker, and Joe Kent: Vance really is the Chosen One. He’s definitely not a reprogrammable android owned and operated by Peter Thiel
- back Fuentes and burn it all down. Then recreate the GOP as ass-kicking nationalists
- do nothing and watch Rubio get crowned as the Israel-approved heir apparent. Get destroyed in 26 and 28 by the DSA-led anti-Israel insurgency
People asking if the Groypers have a plan (since Rod is obsessed by them). If you only watch hostile clips of Fuentes you could be forgiven for thinking there’s no plan. If you let him articulate his argument, the plan is something like:
Step one is to destroy the Republican Party in 26 to put Trump and his lackeys in jail.
Then primary any candidate who won’t renounce Israel, war and immigration.
Create a generational change in the Republican Party and finish the job Trump failed to do: turn the party into a nationalist party.
Then use all levers of the state ruthlessly to destroy the opposition. Just like the Dems have always done.
That is the short term plan. The long term plan copies the Left: infiltrate all institutions of power.
I think Dreher's core moral axiom is the fundamentall goodness and rightness of the Jewish community. That's why antisemitism panics him. He cannot conceive that the antisemites might be right.
I think this is correct although I would say he suffers from the Boomer and Gen X syndrome of having anti-antisemitism programmed into his core moral identity, such that challenging it feels like the threat of personal moral collapse.
The funny thing about 'no enemies to the right' is the original form, 'no enemies to the left', was said by the Russian Menshevik (moderate), Alexander Kerensky.
Now, how did that turn out for the Russians? For the Russian Left except for Stalin?
I’ve been reading Rod for at least 15 years, I don’t see any reason to stop. His is one of the few substacks/blogs that I read daily.
He is lucky to have such loyal followers. I no longer consider him to have anything relevant to say. But I do wish him well on a personal level.
Max, I didn’t discover you thru Rod, but I tend to agree with a lot of your takes and I think you are more to the right than Rod is.
It's funny because I'm not religious at all while Rod is. In many ways, I'm the post-Christian, post-liberal right-wing radical he warns everyone about. LOL
That is quite funny. 😁
I greatly enjoy reading Rod. I can really relate to him as we are both about the same age and remember what it was like to be an American 40-50 years ago. I disagree with him about Trump, but I don’t expect I will agree with him about everything. I also agree that he tends to be too credulous about what he reads in the NY Slime. His principals have been consistent for the 10 or more years I have been reading him. He has always rejected the idea of “no enemies to the right”, as well as hatred of the Jews. He is absolutely correct that overthrowing everything would destroy most of us and make things much worse than they are now. I love his book recommendations & his writing about UFOs. He has helped teach me that much of life is a mystery that we will never understand.
I did decide to let my subscription lapse, but not because he’s too mean to groypers. I think people who are online tend to exaggerate the importance of Fuentes and the groypers. My main criticism of Rod is his utterly credulous irrationalism. I mean, he was always a bit loopy, but it used to be funny. Now he’s gotten downright crazy with the demons and UFO stuff, and Tucker, who sleeps with four dogs in his bed, telling us about demonic attacks leaving scratches. (I have two demons who sometimes leave scratches on my body; their names are Dagny and Dominique, and they appear in the guise of cats.) Tucker’s constant complaints about the Jews are, according to Rod, due to the haunted woods behind his house in Maine. He should have gotten an exorcist! I suspect Qatari money is a lot more salient than anything supernatural
He was always a bit nuts on these things, but it used to be funny. It’s gone beyond that now. What broke it for me was his endorsement of the people who claim they can use facilitated communication (under a rebrand) to channel spiritual insights from nonverbal autistic people. Facilitated Communication isn’t a harmless haunted chair; it’s a practice that has been used to produce false claims of sexual assault and for that matter to justify sexual assault.
As to Vance, I agree, after Vance’s book, that “turning” on him is the right move. Vance has clearly been seduced by the Catholic Integralist crew, who propose something like Iran, except with Catholicism substituting for Shia Islam. How this is ever to be arranged given the religious makeup of the United States is never explained, but apparently theocracy is just the ticket. It’s ironic that, when Kennedy was running, some opponents claimed he’d do the bidding of the Pope. And now JD Vance wants us to do the bidding of a long-dead Pope.
Vance now rejects free markets and adopts the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren view of the economic sphere. If I wanted a communist, I’d just vote for the DSA candidate.
Like I said, I don't share a lot of Rod's views. I skip the parts of his newsletter where he talks UFOs and the paranormal. I consult scientists like Michael Shermer for that stuff. But the idea he's any kind of problem, any kind of drag on the Right, is the Right basically scapegoating Rod. They have a tendency to turn on the 20% who do 80% of the work. They rag on Harmeet Dhillon being being Indian, despite the fact she fought harder for Trump than anyone else. They even got on Chris Rufo for something so retarded, I forgot what it was.
The Right really does treat it like a good ol' boys club.
Harmeet Dillon is a hard worker and a good lawyer. She is also interpersonally rude for no good reason. Which is a reason to dislike her as a person, but not a critique at a policy level.
As for ignoring Rod’s wacky obsessions, it does get harder to do as it takes a greater and greater share of his output. And I do tire of his doomerism combined with constant refrains about the necessity of a return to Christianity. It’s just too much.
I've followed Dreher for years. Never met him or anything, but been reading him for about two decades now.
At root, Dreher just comes off as afraid to act as if the things he said were true.
His allegiance to David French is a great example. Yes, I get that he has a personal connection to French. But he's allowed that personal connection to blind him to the real perniciousness and indeed outright viciousness (in every sense of that word!) that French has come to embody. Dreher thinks of French as a friend, but French consistently acts as an enemy. Yet when other people point that out, Dreher consistently comes to his "friend's" defense.
Does that make Dreher an enemy too? No, I don't think so. But it does make him an unreliable friend. He's in the same category as so many people of his generation and those older than him. He may be willing to call out problems when he sees them, but he opposes almost every course of action that might plausibly improve said problems.
That makes his obsession with groyperism, antisemitism, etc., very difficult to credit. Sure, those things are bad. Granted. But those things wouldn't be nearly the problems they are now if guys that Dreher consistently defends had behaved better.
"Dreher just comes off as afraid to act as if the things he said were true."
I agree, and I think this is because, while Rod's a catastrophizer he's also one of the most optimistic people you'll ever find. He knows what time it is culturally, but he also knows his hope is not in princes or culture or men, but in Christ. This makes him "conservative" in the classic Hobbesian sense, and thus unwilling to act dramatically based on his knowledge. (And while I disagree with him, he may well be correct about that.)
Rod once described himself as "Pessimistic, but hopeful."
More like "unwilling to act at all", much like the majority of Anglosphere leadership cadres his age and older.
The "hope is not in princes. . ." etc., line, deployed the way you're deploying it here, is just a pious-sounding way of justifying inaction and cowardice.
God parted the Red Sea for the Israelites. But God worked through Moses in bringing salvation to his people. Specifically, God commanded Moses to 1) tell the Israelites to go forward, and 2) stretch out his hand over the sea. He was God's chosen instrument for that time and place, the means by which God carried out his will. For Moses to sit on his butt and say, "No, I'm not going to do anything, our hope has to be in God!" would have been disobedient.
None of us today are Moses. But lots of us are fathers, church leaders, holders of public office, etc. Refusing to take action in defense of those for whom one is responsible is a cowardly abdication of that responsibility. Appealing to "hope not in princes" makes that worse, not better.
I honestly wish he'd quit defending David French. Once was enough. But it's also not up to us to tell him how to treat his friends.
As for "unreliable friend," Rod doesn't make politics part of his personality, the beginning and the end of his entire existence. Neither do I. So I reject that framing entirely. One look at the Left and you see what happens with people who make ideology central to their personhood. They get away with it only because America is such a liberal society.
We're equivocating on "friend".
Dreher is French's "friend" in a strictly personal sense.
I characterize Dreher as an unreliable "friend" in the Schmittian sense.
But since you mention it, a lot of Dreher's problems can be said to arise, far from "mak[ing] politics part of his personality," but from letting his personality, and his personal commitments, dictate his perspective on politics.
Like, seriously, if he wants to be kind to French, he's allowed to do that. Everybody's got people they're close to who beclown themselves. But the way to do that is privately. To simply not engage with the public criticism voluntarily, and when pressed, simply say "French is my friend; I don't want to talk about it."
Instead, he winds up defending not only French, but French's perspective. Which Dreher then winds up adopting, at least in part. He's so sympathetic to French as an individual that he can't help but be sympathetic to the things French says and does.
Which is an awfully feminine way of going about things, come to think of it. Fits with the whole "emotionally incontinent" bit.
Dreher is less taking politics personally and more making his personality his politics.
That's not great either.
Hear HEAR - very well said.
I suppose, like Patriot Front, whatever the man may be his meme has escaped him. From the deeper right commentators I got the impression of him as a political Anthony Bourdain. Once well respected, but now people just shake their head and expect a final social-clout suicide.
Well, I just subscribed to him, thanks to you, I didn't even know about him. Free, of course, I'm on social security, and what extra income I do have I use to help a deserving Zoomer.
But I read a LOT, and say very little. If the man gives me information, and reason to think, good enough. I've learned people are arguing about the "truth" constantly, and it's not only NOT "somewhere between" all of them, it's usually like a giant buck deer, watching all the hunters beat the bushes while it's resting in the shade on the next mountain. It's definitely a "humorous, yet tragic" situation. 🙄😏🤣
Rod's worth the money. In the beginning (12 years ago), Rod and TAC pulled me away from my libertarianism. Now Rod keeps me from sliding too far into Christian nationalism. He's changed over that time too, but has always gives me reason to think.
That's an excellent recommendation, especially in these times when its so easy to lose our political/cultural "sense of balance".
Rod has lost me, and I used to be a BIG fan. Even led a Live Not By Lies study.
But this year his typical post is quoting the NYT and the Atlantic and smearing Trump. And I let him know more than once that I didn't appreciate it. I finally got fed and am letting my subscription expire.
I do agree that targeting his divorce is a low blow. We don't know what he went through so it is best not to presume about that.
Sincere question: why do you take it so personally if someone goes after Trump? Assuming I'm not misinterpreting what you're saying, of course.
Rod does that again and again. I don't take it personally, but it pisses me off that he sides with the NYT etc. against Trump. Plus I don't think Trump gets nearly enough credit, including from you.
Trump doesn't get nearly enough criticism from the Right, either. They hold him to such a pathetically low standard, therefore failing to be honest about him.
I think history has a chance to be kinder to Trump. Even then, I think he'll be remembered only about as well as Boris Yeltsin is remembered in Russia today.
If so, that will be because libs and Marxists write most history books.
I had a chance to spend part of a day with Rod several years ago, even saw him through his first Evangelical church service. He truly is the most merry doomer you will ever find.
I have lots of criticism of his equation of racist authoritarianism on Left and Right, some of which I've shared on his own stack. But he's one of very few online people I would "go have a beer with" (and I don't even drink.)
To those who want to write him off though. Benedict Option: 5 years ahead of its time. Live Not By Lies: 3 years ahead of its time. The rise of the UFO thing: predicted it 2 years ahead. He's had a few misses as well (2023: "Europe's going to freeze to death w/o Russian gas!") but he's got a better track record of predicting the future than most.
Did you get a chance to speak with him?
Rod does say, quite bluntly, that if he had to choose, he'd pick right-wing authoritarianism every time. But he's not glib about how awful it'd be, either.
Rod's a cultural guy. Politics is downstream of culture. That's why he has a good sense for where things are headed. Stuff like "EUROPE GONNA FREEZE!" is attributable to his susceptibility to doomerism. Ironically, what actually happened is "EUROPE GONNA COOK!" This is why it pays to believe in science: the climate activists weren't wrong on that.
For several hours. I sat next to him at church. We talked quite a bit at lunch. It was at a small event in Sacramento just pre-COVID. 60-80 people over 3 days, so lots of time.
I agree. Rod is a culture guy (really a religion guy) and you're really not. Your focus is more practical, and that makes the two of you great complements to each other as writers.
Pretty sure I found your substack through Rod. He definitely defaults to rather "boomer con" takes, and is way too reflexively trusting of mainstream media. Though he's said several times that while the groypers or whatever et al don't have power yet, he's trying to avoid the right in 10 years becoming what the left is now because no one really tried to put the brakes on their crazies. Maybe he's right, but also maybe the people saying he's being too conservative (not in the political sense) are right. Honestly I've lost a lot of interest in politics these days, I mostly stick around for when he writes about what he refers to as "the woo."
As an older person he's going to be less disposed to radicalism. Honestly, some of the people of his generation who call for radicalism, like Charles Haywood, are cringe-worthy.
There's a definite generational gap, something Rod is constantly acknowledging (he often says something to the effect of "us olds just don't get it"). I wish he engaged more in the comments, though I doubt he has the time (his responses are often very short and IMO come off as written quickly and reflexively). The format isn't really helpful for deep discussion anyway I suppose.
I recently binged a podcast called "Roots of Everything" (I've had to drive a lot lately) and he had an interesting series on pop culture. Essentially the exaggerated generational gaps in culture with each generation essentially rebelling against the previous has done a lot to fragment our society.
Even after meeting him, I still find it hard to communicate with him regularly because he has such a large social circle, he's constantly working, and he has so many people vying for his attention. I'm sure he gets tired of talking to people all the time, too.
I spoke several essays ago about how ridiculous it is for right-wing commentators like Auron MacIntyre to be all but calling for civil war. MacIntyre isn't old, but violence isn't his thing, either. If a major civil war popped off, he'd be one of the first people the Left go after. I'm not saying we should live in fear of the Left, but I also think a lot of these right-wing commentators and influencers need a strong dose of reality injected into them.
I think that's all Rod's trying to do. He just wants a sane Right. You can't really argue that.