Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™: the medium is the message

What is Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option™? It's an advertising branding construct designed to draw readers into conversations about Rod Dreher writing about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™. That's it. Because conversations about Rod Dreher writing about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ is a consumate end in itself, it doesn't have to do anything else.

Dreher recently reopened the conversation himself from some who suggested his gecko wasn't green enough, Cockney enough, and maybe really didn't save them all that much money after all the advertising costs were finally factored in. In true Dreher form he appealed to someone else to keep his illusory imperial pants decently up where they belong, in the process hysterically charging his critics (second hand, passive-aggressively) with "Christian Derangement Syndrome".

The very first commenter out of the starting gate nails Dreher's advertising chimera:

Republican or Christian derangement syndrome is often easy to identify, and to justify: because we generally know what a Republican, or what a Christian is.

The problem with your “Benedict Option,” Rod, is that too often you tell readers what it is not, or give some highly refined and narrow example of what it is by means of anecdote.

But unlike Christianity or Republicanism, I don’t see a clear articulation of “the Benedict Option” is supposed to be, and more pointedly, how it is supposed to work (economically, financially, socially.)

From another angle: people often don’t misunderstand “the Amish option” because it’s so clear how (most) Amish people live, even if Old Order Amish get to speak for the rest of the Amish, who may not be as strict.

In short, it’s not “derangement syndrome” if it’s hard to categorically articulate and describe what “it” is supposed to be.

Dreher then unequivocally explains what the is of it is if it were:

[NFR: And for the millionty-billionth time, the question I'm asking is: is it possible to build a community that avoids, or at least minimizes, the problems of these failed ones? Can we learn from their mistakes? I don't accept the jibe, "Oh, see, you're JUST LIKE David Koresh!" -- RD]

Alright, let's accept for the sake of argument that, if it's not in fact nothing more than a conversational eschatological gecko, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ is something that actually might be striven for. And who better to illustrate that lifestyle than the creator of the brand himself, Rod Dreher?

What sort of Benedict Option does the brand master Rod Dreher live out in real life?

I am a prosperous middle-class Christian living like the King of Exurbia in the freest and richest nation that ever was.

Yes, indeedy. And Crunchy Con himself ain't about to give up strolling tastings of premium bourbons on the streets of his fairytale Southern Shire, or vacations in France, the Netherlands and Italy, or trips to eat at New Orleans' finest restaurants in order to spend the extra time either getting closer to God or carrying out Jesus' mandates. Oh - remember Crunchy Cons? They too were important, at least until his book about them hit the remaindering bin like a meteor; he hasn't wasted a dozen paragraphs on that dead nag of an idea since.

Because, in reality, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ can be whatever you want it to be. It's that magical copper bracelet that helps you think of yourself as exactly the sort of person you would like to think of yourself as, except, you know, more so. When you take Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™, you flee the morally corrosive effects of that single mom who works at the porn store because in Dreher's Obamacon America that's the only job she can get and that grubby kid of hers who might teach your kid a bad word for the theotic refuge of fellow effete foodies who smash ice for their mint juleps together with handmade pear wood mallets on granite counter tops. Really, could Jesus' mandate be any more clear?

While those who stubbornly still can't find their way to that happy place somewhere over the rainbow continue to totter around, rebounding from door jambs, the Christian butt sex team comes to Dreher's rescue, bringing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ full circle, nose to tail, or back to its "proper place", as classicists talking about these things might say: clickbaity readers' conversations about Rod Dreher writing about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™. Alpha and Omega.

Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™. Coffee talk by discriminating religious talkers talking about Rod Dreher writing about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™, because Christ's Church alone just might not be good enough, not smart enough, an ordinary, worldy pea tormenting your well-fed, something-more-seeking princess bottom  - and of course you might end up having to sit next to that mousy single mom who works at the porn store.

Frankly, when Rod Dreher finally concludes there will never be a profitable book to be had about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ (subtitle: Crunchy Cons Refrijoles), I expect talk about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ to go exactly where all that important and exciting talk about Crunchy Cons is furiously boiling away these days: like yesterday's dew in the desert.

In the meantime, if you stubbornly cling to your guns and religion and your ordinary ice-crushing framing hammer instead of taking the more ultimatey everything Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ (or the ALS challenge, for that matter), if what-ees-thees-ordinary-"church"-theeng? happens to be all the Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ you need in life, don't be surprised if your betters hold their noses, insinuating your manifest "derangement". Passive-aggressively, of course.

UPDATE (as they say): What Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ surely must be good for: providing additional plausible deniability the next time some parenting app exposes your own failings in that department.