Sheer brilliance, really

In the first and only comment so far to a post promoting Rod Dreher's forthcoming Dante book he offers us this insightful and useful NFR:

[NFR: Thanks James. I'm writing the book with the idea that most people who buy it will neither be familiar with Dante, nor will read Dante when they finish my book. If I've been completely successful, they *will* go out to buy the Commedia when they're done with my book, but I want it to be a book that can stand on its own. -- RD]

What an absolutely stunning coincidence!

It just so happens that I myself am in the process of writing a book about how the intricate processes in the hearts of stars caused me to look up at the night sky as a boy and wonder.

I'm writing the book with the idea that most people who buy it will neither be familiar with the intricate processes in the hearts of stars, nor will they read anything further about the actual intricate processes in the hearts of stars when they finish my book. That way, the number of people likely to call BS on what I have to say in passing about the intricate processes in the hearts of stars will be minimal and easy enough to dismiss with a few well-placed rhetorical flourishes. And, of course, the less about the intricate processes in the hearts of stars, the more room for about me.

In other words, I want it to be a book that can stand on its own, not dependent in the slightest about anything I may or may not actually know about the intricate processes in the hearts of stars, processes whose only value anyway was to inspire wonder in me as a small boy.

As you may have noticed, "the intricate processes in the hearts of stars" is what's known as a "hook", from the apocryphal use of long stick with a curved end used to yank credulous, gaping rubes inside a tent at a carnival in order to most efficiently separate them from their hard-earned money.

I had thought of using scantily clad, large-bosomed women as my hook instead, but I believe that's been done and I wanted to cut through the clutter, so I chose the intricate processes in the hearts of stars instead.

Maybe next time I'll use Dante.

"Why were you visiting the Great Satan America, Patriarch?"

Nasty Local Muslim Leader Keith: Why were you visiting the Great Satan America, Patriarch?

Patriarch: Shopping. We wished to do some shopping.

NLMLK: Shopping?

Patriarch: Yes, shopping.

NLMLK: But what was this "In Defense of Christians", Patriarch?

Patriarch: It is a shopping club.

NLMLK: A shopping club? Then what is it defending you from?

Patriarch: Unseemly high prices.

NLMLK: High prices? Not persecution? I have been told you visited the Great Satan to gain relief from being persecuted.

Patriarch: No, only high prices. We do not feel you persecute us. We only visited the Great Satan for the shopping.

NLMLK: And so who was this "Ted Cruz"?

Patriarch: Nobody. We had heard he offered group discounts.

NLMLK: And did he?

Patriarch: Yes, but there were Jews involved, so we rejected his offers.

NLMLK: I see. Good. One cannot be too careful when publicly traveling to the Great Satan and shopping as In Defense of Christians. Someone could misunderstand your motives, particularly the Jews. If nothing else, they might tempt you with inferior merchandise at ridiculously low prices.

Patriarch: No one could misunderstand our reason for being there. We were scrupulously careful about whom we associated with in our gatherings. Only other shoppers like ourselves.

NLMLK: Good, Patriarch, good. Say, would you happen to know where I could get a good deal on a Samsung 105-inch 4K? The curved one.

Does Rod Dreher simply invent his anonymous readers?

I for one think he does, the most recent being here and here. The reason these particular narratives ring hollow to me (not that they each could not occur independently on their own, saying the same thing) is that each of their factual narratives reads like one of Dreher's oblique, elliptical, passive-aggressive pseudo-intellectual aesthetic-moral ramblings but now made incarnate, inevitably producing the same wooden result as a Tom Clancy attempt at a female character or a romantic scene.

By externatizing the narrative and rendering it "factual", even if anecdodatal, Dreher sock-puppets himself, in the process creating a three dimensional reality in which his thought vapors now live (ostensibly) fully rich and realized lives. For example, a reader writes to tell me

Our endemic Southern Gothic culture of early childhood sibling incest here in the West Feliciana Parish area, though never, ever spoken of in polite company, probably has much to do with sibling conflicts that erupt later in life around here and can never really be adequately explained.

There's at least one fairly obvious reason that otherwise credulous readers can be led to be made complicit in legitimizing what might otherwise be a wholly fictitious post: their ego's need to comment on whatever its content is and to see their comment in print.

If I as a wholly reactive commenter on a Rod Dreher post decides, "Bullsh*t! This is obviously fake, and I'm having no part of it", I now have to wait until Dreher makes another post before I can see the scintillating wisdom of my comment in print. Besides, he won't publish any comment that outright claims he's inventing content out of whole cloth to facilitate his own job. So maybe I'll just ignore that little voice in my head and go ahead and comment anyway as if the post were legit. Really, what harm could it do? And that way, I can eat the offered treats right out of his hand. And he might even pet me.

Of course, realize I'm not taking a hard and fast stand on any of this, I'm just throwing these various issues out there for you readers to discuss among yourselves, among them, what is Dreher's objective record when it comes to veracity? Is there a baseline of evidence that should compel me to give him the benefit of the doubt, even when something doesn't ring true?