Safe Spaces for Benedict Option BOppers

Are you a Benedict Optioneer, or, the abbreviation I feel best captures your essence, a BOpper?

Then you'll need a Safe Space in which to do your thing, whether it's to thoughtfully discuss the many possibilities of what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ could even be on the Internet - oh, and for that you'll also need an Internet and someone to keep it up, won't you - or simply to pray hard, eat crawfish, drink beer, and keep singing, because "as long as you can still make a roux, everything’s going to be alright" anyway (because, as everyone else knows, this whole charade you've been gulled into is nothing more than a marketing campaign for an unwritten book).

Of course, you won't be capable of creating and maintaining that Safe Space yourself, sillies. Don't be ridiculous. If you were that strong-willed and capable, you wouldn't be retreating into playing Dungeons & Dragons for Christians (D&D/C) in a vain attempt to overcome your post-Modern ennui, would you, you would just be another real Christian making his way through life as he finds it.

But since you are one of those fluffy, fantasizing BOpper lambs instead, let me introduce you to two guys who will be creating and maintaining that Safe Space within which you can safely let your eyes roll back in your head as you await that time after the collapse when you will miraculously emerge from your fantasy and restore moral order on Earth.

The one on the left is Mr. Police Officer (po-LEECE OFF-ih-sir) and the one on the right is Mr. Soldier (SOUL-djer).

Neither of them have the luxury of chatting on the Internet between eating crawfish, drinking beer and singing, because they have real and important jobs to do, little lambs, which is to keep your self-indulgent, post-Modern Christian hippie asses safe at the risk of losing their own while you complain about how the food out there is so ordinary, the choices on TV are so poor, and how everything that's wrong with your children is someone else's fault while you play Dungeons & Dragons for Christians as a way to escape the horror of it all.

Don't you worry, little BOpper lambs, they'll be there to keep your Safe Spaces safe while you await that far eschatological moment in history reserved just for you.

And while you wait, look! I've created a badge to honor you, special little BOpper lambs, yes you!

Unlike real Christians who throughout history simply played the cards they were dealt and soldiered through on their faith and will until this glorious moment to give birth to you finally, finally arrived, I know how you so detest the "culture" that you find yourself so cruelly born into. And so to signify your rejection, I've enclosed that hateful landscape in a big red no-no circle and slash. I've even distilled your essence into a motto for you.

Sleep tight, little BOpper lambs, and then awake, refreshed, to pray hard, eat crawfish, drink beer, sing, and play another round of Dungeons & Dragons for Christians on the Internet with your friends. Mr. Police Officer and Mr. Soldier will be there to protect you from your enemies and keep you safe, and now you even have your very own badge to represent you.

From the safety of his bunker, Rod Dreher mocks "safe spaces"

Not that the phenomenon doesn't richly deserve mocking. I've glanced at and excerpted this so that, mercifully, you will be spared reading the whole thing:

So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”

Ms. Byron and some fellow task force members secured a meeting with administrators. Not long after, Brown’s president, Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault.” Meanwhile, student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.

However, what deserves mocking even more, if that's possible, is Brave Sir Roddy standing tall on the ramparts over it

Why America Rod Dreher Deserves What It He Gets

Let's remember that, for decades now, any comment seriously critical of anything Dreher says has had less chance of getting approved by his personal self-validating "curating" process than a poisoned quail would have had making it through the gauntlet of Louis XIV's food tasters.

But Rod has not only been obsessed with making his own space safe for his "experiences" to remain "validated" beyond contest, he's felt it necessary to reach out into other peoples spaces, for example, his local Topix forum, and have content he feels threatens to validate his experiences removed.

Finally, can we recall the very reason itself for Rod's upcoming book on how Dante saved his life? That's right, because out in that horribly unsafe space I casually refer to as "the world" Rod's family remained stubborn beyond his curating, and even dared to invalidate his experiences, throwing him hopelessly into a "dark wood".

So when people think I'm being too hard on Rod Dreher, I beg to differ. I'm only helping him to overcome the terrible crippling condition of being a "special snowflake" he's cultivated in and for himself, year in and year out, now heading into middle age, as a deformed human being, a hypocritical, pathological bully, forever punching down on those weaker than himself while squealing about his suffering and begging for pity, someone manifestly without the courage to recognize what everyone else has long ago, that the qualities and behavioral urges he constantly condemns in others are those he most intimately recognizes and most fiercely loathes in himself - but will forever be too cowardly to address where they really lurk, in that cozy Benedictine Option corner deep inside himself.