Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Self-revelations or Lies?

If the anonymous author of the Benedict Post is actually Rod Dreher as we've assumed in the past, then I don't know what to do with this excerpt from a recent post.

Like Scalia, I am a former high school debater, a product of a Jesuit education, a traditionalist-minded Catholic, a conservative, and a lawyer. To see someone so similar, in that prominent of a position, not only saying it’s okay to think this way, but this is the way you should be thinking about the law was incredibly inspiring and motivating. As one of the many conservative legal minds who had (and will have) the privilege of learning the law from you: thank you, Justice Scalia.

Obviously Rod Dreher is none of these things, although an argument could be made that he is a conservative since many people think he is, including himself. But he is not any type of functional conservative, not any more than he is a functional ice cube. (Oh brother, Pauli, do you really want to bring up your support for that loser Romney who very losingly lost the 2016 Presidential election? Sure; if Donald Trump gets the GOP nod, I'll vote for his sinking ship over HRC.) So if this is Dreher's sock-puppet site, he is being extremely deceptive in claiming to be a Catholic lawyer with a Jesuit education. Of course, he has a history of doing this as we know.

This post goes on seemingly forever, quoting and commentating upon practically everybody's farewell tribute to Scalia. I don't know if anyone who reads here is bored enough to compare the quotes with Dreher's TAC tribute — I assume he wrote one — to check for matches, similar patterns, etc. The other angle might be to skim through the writings of His Crunchiness to identify traditionalist-minded, Jesuit produced, former debater, "conservative" friends for whom Dreher provides a name. I'm thinking of people like the rich guy who he drank beers with in Europe who is tired of fast-food joints and dumb-ass Republicans. He might be a lawyer who doesn't want to lose clients by admitting he actually buys into this Benedict Option balderdash.



The possibility exists that Dreher is the author and is simply lying about law degrees and Catholic cred to throw people off the trail. I wouldn't be naïve enough to rule that out. But there are so many nuts out there, like my font abuse friend whom I've written about (and more recent news about him later), that I don't doubt this person could be a separate individual from Rod Dreher. He could be just another self-righteous, politically-homeless dude with a blog, a permanent scowl and a desire for a Christian ghetto apart from all those pesky Christians.

Subtitles for the Benedict Option book

Benedict Option
Not a crow, a penguin sentinel guarding the approaches to your thinking

UPDATE (as they say): Apparently Rod Dreher's brilliant, Svengali-like agent, the one who got him the million-dollar advance for the now-remaindered book about Rod's sister Ruthie, has found some pickings yet within the greater fool theory of publishing.

I say apparently because, OTOH, no one from Penguin Sentinel has actually called me to confirm this while, OTOH, you would just not believe the zetabytes of anonymous email I myself receive praising not only my posts but my very existence as well. So there's obviously an issue of credibility to be resolved here with respect to this alleged Penguin Sentinel publishing contract. But enough about me and any hypothetical eating of any hypothetical crow over this hypothetical Benedict Option book ::cough::.

Anyway, now Rod wants subtitles for his, as Pikkumatti has aptly described it, vaporware.

I've already offered one suggestion:

The Benedict Option: Revenge of the Nerds

based on my analysis that, at bottom, the only religion which can adequately fulfill all the conditions with which Rod has circumscribed his concept is the one within which he has now taken refuge, Russian Orthodoxy, and from which Safe Space he now wages the good fight of Mean Girl snark against all other practitioners as he routinely characterizes them: those MTD Protestants, those pedophile and laissez-faire Catholics, and obviously those Christ-denying Jews alike.

Hey, if you're not an Orthodox Christian, according to Rod's consistent blogging you're obviously not a real orthodox Christian, and you're just not going to pass through that narrow eye of the needle into the kingdom of the select BO.

But an equally useful subtitle might be

The Benedict Option: Though Your Personal Faith in Christ and Christianity Have Failed You in Our Current Age, Fear Not: I, Rod Dreher, Am Here To Show You a New Way

Because if your personal faith in Christ and Christianity were sufficient, why would you need a Benedict Option to shore them up?

Okay, that's two from me. What are your suggestions for faceless editor Bria Sandford, FNG and lowest member on the Penguin Sentinel totem pole, tasked with selecting a subtitle for and otherwise rendering Rod's hypothetical Benedict Option book?