Bookworm reviews a review from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO

Reviews of reviews are all the rage these days, and all the cool kidz are doing it. So it is satisfying to read a review of a review of Rod Dreher's new book which is itself a massive review of Dante's famous work, The Divine Comedy which, I should say, I highly recommend reading for those with immortal souls.

Reviews, reviews, out the wazoos....

(OK, here's the review, without further ado.)

George P. Wood of Springfield, MO reviewed Rod's book on Amazon and explains to everybody what the problem was. George is a pretty impressive guy with some impressive degrees and obviously knows a lot about a lot of things.

[Link to review from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO]

"The problem was that Dreher had left Starhill for a reason: The inability of his family—especially his father, but even Ruthie herself—to understand any way that wasn’t their way."

See, that's the problem with folks around here, and George P. Wood of Springfield, MO knows it. Just close minded people. It wasn't Rod. George P. Wood of Springfield, MO just explained to the world why it wasn't.

And so when Rod came back, believe it or not folks were still that way. Unable to understand any way that wasn't their way, especially Rod's way. And that flaw in them made Rod physically sick.

Folks just can't get any lower or meaner than that, making other people physically sick by being unable to understand any way that isn’t their way.

“Well,” his rheumatologist told him,“you have a choice. Leave Louisiana, or resign yourself to destroying your health."

"Dreher felt that wasn’t a choice. There must be a way to stay put and find inner peace."

And sure enough there was. Write another book about how folks around here make other people physically sick by being unable to understand any way that isn’t their way. You heard it from George P. Wood of Springfield, MO himself, and so did the rest of the world.

I admit that on many occasions in the past I've been enraged by Rod Dreher. But this fellow Bookworm provides a great example of why I'm no longer angered by him. Everyone save a few weirdos is onto him at this point. He has sunk so low that he has had to invent academic sock puppets to encourage him and to beg him to write books and so forth. His publisher is basically an opportunistic soft-core peddler who made sure there was T&A on his book cover. He has blamed his poor health on people not liking him. He has clung bitterly to this Bunker Option thing even though it has proven to be nothing more than raving. He deplores our plastic disposable hedonistic society and then commits selfie-abuse amid piles of restaurant food.

No one I care about is giving this guy any respect anymore, and that's the way it should be. I just loaded that ridiculous pic into How Old -- here's the result:

When robots think you look like a 49-year-old woman it's time to pull a makeover or put the camera away. Or both, dude.

Religion as the opiate lithium of the Working Boy

On the eve of the birthday of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior it probably really is fitting if still ironic that our Working Boy in this almost perfect post to that end uses his unique gift for words to explain over and over again the absolutely wrong way to relate to Christianity and to God: as a mental patient undergoing psychological therapy.

The evidence for Dreher's fundamental misunderstanding here isn't to be had legalistically in any particular lines or paragraphs this time, which is why I'm not excerpting any and why in this case, seriously, you really do need to read the whole thing.

Instead, this time the evidence is to be found in the whole, what the Germans refer to as gestalt. As exquisitely laid out throughout the entire post, Dreher simply reveals no grasp at all that religion in general and Christianity in particular has any role other than setting the disordered psyche right again.

There isn't any "spiritual sickness" at play here, at least none distinguishable from psychological woes, no independently spiritual crises of faith itself, certainly no objective demonic possession. For Dreher, then, God and Christianity, particularly through the sled work prescribed by his Orthodoxy therapist, thus becomes the apotheotic nostrum - the ultimate cure for what ails ya, a way to generate a virtual private psychological Innernet network wormhole through the ordinary psychological storms of everyday life in the world outside, the sort others routinely master but which will always threaten to consume him.

(There is, of course, a Hail Mary insanity plea to be raised: that Dreher has deliberately sculpted this heartfelt post in the way he has solely to promote sales of his forthcoming God-through-Dante-as-salving-self-help-book. Not really sure how that helps.)

In Dreher's particular case his psychological disorder begins and, frankly, will probably never end with his fraught relationship with his family and the community of his birth. As he makes abundantly and tragically clear in every line in this Christmas post, though, he seeks relief from his torment in religious process as psychological therapy with exactly the same immature confusion in which an adolescent pursues love through sex.

Maybe there's a moment somewhere over the years where Dreher has sought to serve God rather than vice versa, endlessly pursuing Him as prescription or therapist in one utilitarian form or another. Show me.

Unlike Ambien, God, even through Orthodoxy, isn't supposed to be the cure for what ails ya, Rod. And while both religion and sex can be mistakenly utilized as therapy, it's ultimately an immature perversion of both to do so. And, finally, no, Dante's Commedia is not the ultimate self-help book, a High (Falutin') Medieval Italian Brodo di Pollo per L'anima.

Or at least until now it was never, ever supposed to be.