Even though he has monstrous beliefs, I find it hard not to pity Rod Dreher a little. Maybe because we’re around the same age and both spent our formative years as bookish, oddball children in disreputable Confederate backwaters. I understand the toll that can take on a person!
Dreher seems to deal with it by joining clubs that do not want him, forming movements no one wants to join, changing religions like other people change socks, ostentatiously returning to his ancestral roots only to be rebuffed, etc. I suspect these are desperate attempts to fill a howling void at his core. Sad!
Anyhoo, after his family of origin in Louisiana told him to sod off and his wife dumped him,* Dreher went to Budapest to sample the authoritarian Christianist monoculture Viktor Orbán is creating there, which Dreher says is “more free” than Western democracies because wokety-wokeism.
Dreher sees Hungary as a model conservatives can use to overthrow American democracy in favor of Christo-fascist one-party rule. (I assume he’s a super-fan of Florida’s Rage Munchkin, a fellow Orbánist.)
But a piece at The Bulwark points out that although Dreher is paid to shill for Orbán, he hasn’t yet fully grasped the subtle rules for foreign stooges who wish to promote authoritarian regimes, to wit, if the boss autocrat says something wildly impolitic to a private audience of foreign toadies, don’t blast quotes worldwide on your blog.
Someone asked the prime minister if he wanted Hungary to stay in the EU. “Definitely not!” he said, adding that Hungary has no choice, because 85 percent of its exports are within the EU…
According to The Bulwark, this caused a sensation in Hungary when other media outlets picked it up. Also:
To be clear, Viktor Orban doesn’t want the West to be in a war with Russia. But he says that far too many Westerners are deluding themselves about what’s really happening—and what could happen…
Orban said that the West needs to understand that Putin cannot afford to lose, and will not lose, because he’s up for re-election next year, and he cannot run as the president who lost a war.
Wait — does he think Russia has honest elections? Well, neither does Hungary, so I guess it’s a wash. Also:
What’s more, {Orbán} said, Russia cannot allow NATO to establish a presence in Ukraine. The time has long passed when Russia might have been able to conquer Ukraine, or install a friendly regime. Had Russia won a quick victory, that might have been possible, but it’s hopeless now. Therefore, said Orban, Russia’s goal is to make Ukraine an ungovernable wreck, so the West cannot claim it as a prize. At this, they have already succeeded.
Ukrainians understandably took exception to this characterization. The Foreign Ministry summoned Hungary’s ambassador to Ukraine to register a complaint, and a spokesman noted that “Budapest is continuing a deliberate course aimed at destroying Hungarian-Ukrainian relations.”
Dreher attempted to clean up the mess by editing his blog to make it sound like Orbán meant the opposite of what he said and made excuses for hinting at a “Huxit,” including “he was joking!” But it sounds like it was a massive fuck-up, and it’s amusing to picture the panicked editing.
Maybe Dreher will get kicked out of Hungary too. They’re probably as tired of the mopey sumbitch as everyone else is.
Open thread.
PS: Here’s a gift link to a NYT article on America’s ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman. Joe Biden — God love him! — sent a gay man who has a husband and two children to represent the United States.
*It feels kind of mean to mention these personal things, but he writes and talks about them all the time, so it also feels like fair game. Another thing we have in common — oversharing!
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Open Thread)
Baud
Just goes to show that nothing good can come out of blogging.
Gravenstone
A brief lesson in how to piss off everyone, all at once? Mission accomplished, Rod.
Splitting Image
I always get Rod Dreher confused with Ross Douthat. I can never decide which one should be insulted by the comparison.
Old School
He might only get 91% of the vote if that happens. (Edit: I see the official total in the last election was 77.53% for Putin.)
Amir Khalid
@Splitting Image:
Warum nicht die beide?
Tony Jay
Never feel bad about dragging Dreher for what he says and does. He’s a dishonest weirdo with more issues than Mad Magazine.
This is the guy who ‘proved’ that Leftists don’t really care about racism because they haven’t all burnt their copies of Brown Sugar.
Case rested.
Quaker in a Basement
Hey! You’re on Edroso’s turf. This is a clear violation of union rules.
Betty Cracker
@Quaker in a Basement: I am not in his league so it doesn’t count.
MattF
It’s occurred to me that the various RW snowflakes all understand what very well what everyone thinks of them. They can probably quote their critics verbatim. And they believe that, somehow, their personal stupidities and inadequacies can be overcome by sheer force of will. But… um… no. Just doesn’t work that way. Sorry.
piratedan
@Splitting Image: it’s a matter of labels… odious and odier, but as far as I’m concerned, they could be interchangable… :-)
jackmac
Putin’s up for re-election next year?
In the event he’s still alive by that point, in what universe will that election actually take place?
Alison Rose
Imagine being a pickme for someone horrible who is in turn a pickme for someone even more horrible.
Also I love how putin is supposed to be BIG TOUGH MAN and yet everyone wants to mollycoddle him and treat his feelings like they were made of the thinnest glass on Earth. People talk about “let’s not upset him” like he’s a screaming toddler they finally got to chill out in front of the TV with a Gogurt.
hueyplong
Would say that Dreher can go fuck himself, but it appears he may have already done so.
Yet another case of FAFO.
trollhattan
“Corporations are people, my friend.”
–Mittens McWillardpants Throckdoodle Romney IV
Well then, let’s see some “people” do some prison time.
trollhattan
@jackmac: Nailbiter: does he receive 99 or a perilous 98%?
ETA Vlad’s mewling about not having to face German tanks for eighty years. But now?
“It’s unbelievable but true,” he said. “We are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks.”
Suzanne
OMG I read this story earlier today and was like WHUUUUUUUUT.
I hope the CIA is following this dude.
NotMax
Mirror universe Dale Carnegie.
Baud
I’d imagine if it were a US initiated war, that justification would have been met with more outrage.
C Stars
Thanks for the article link. It’s always kind of fun to watch Dreher get himself into a pickle, considering how silly and imperious he is. I can’t wait for his kids to write memoirs of living with Dad (although it seems he hasn’t actually really been around for much of his kids’ raising).
Butch
@Quaker in a Basement: I’m always too late to these parties. I was going to call out Edroso. I guess I’ll go back to making supper.
lollipopguild
I really like the fact that Hungary hates,hates,hates the E.U. but since they do 85% of their trade with it they are going to grin and bear it and stay in the E.U. Also–Putin must be allowed to win! He must!
Steve in the ATL
@Betty Cracker: he’s a journeyman, you’re an apprentice?
Suzanne
@C Stars: He’s so fucken broken. It’s really terrifying to watch. Most of his commenters are similarly terrified. Seeing trannies around every corner!
Kent
And in case being a paid mouthpiece for a foreign autocrat isn’t enough, he has a side gig defending pedophile priests for free
Baud
@lollipopguild: No Hungarexit? Orban is smarter than Boris Johnson.
Frank Wilhoit
“…the authoritarian Christianist monoculture Viktor Orbán is creating there, which Dreher says is ‘more free’ than Western democracies…”
Draw the conclusions. There are at least two.
The first is that it is meaningless to compare degrees of “freedom” without saying for whom.
The second is that “freedom” is today merely a euphemism for unaccountability.
The corollary to the second is that “freedom” is no longer a legitimate aspiration.
Doug
Ambassador Pressman is not there to pat anyone’s little head, either. Hungary’s foreign minister claimed that Hungary’s choices about Ukraine were an internal matter. Amb. Pressman on twitter: “Respectfully, we do not consider Russia’s attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Europe as just a ‘domestic political development in Hungary.’”
https://twitter.com/USAmbHungary/status/1621179018841055233
Once upon a time, I lived in Budapest, back when the thought of the Hungarian government becoming crypto-supporters of Russia would have been shocking or hilarious, or probably both. When the remaining Russian troops from Warsaw Pact days were dragging their feet about leaving, Budapest’s taxi drivers offered to take them all to the border so they could gtfo. “You came in within 48 hours in ’56, you can jolly well get out within 48 hours now.”
I’m no more than two degrees of separation from Orban, but there’s no real consensus in my circle whether he was always like that or if it’s too much power for too long.
C Stars
@Kent: Oh gross. And unsurprising. His transphobic schtick is the whole “I’m so concerned about the kids!” angle, a sure sign that whoever is proclaiming concern doesn’t give a fuck about the kids.
Hoodie
@Baud: Hungary would be worse off than the UK. Imagine all the customs issues it would have getting goods from outside the EU.
Baud
@Hoodie: Ok, fine. But how does Switzerland do it?
Alison Rose
@C Stars: Certainly not about trans kids. Interesting how these people profess such “concern” for kids and then demonize and bully them and their families.
Hoodie
@Baud: You have to allow one country for all the billionaires to hide their money. They don’t need two.
Suzanne
@Frank Wilhoit:
Exactly right. Dreher isn’t concerned about his religious liberties in the US, not genuinely. He’s terrified about right-wing Christians losing social status, friends, esteem, and careers of prominence or control. He doesn’t want to be seen as a weirdo or an outlier. He wants to be the median person. So Hungary seems “freer” becaus he can say nasty stuff about LGBT people without being afraid that he’s hurting anyone’s feelings.
His transparent shilling is really something to gawk at.
I feel like the ex divorced him because he’s crazy and obsessive.
Baud
@Suzanne: Didn’t Andrew Tate think something similar about Romania?
Doug
@Baud: Lots of EU-CH bilateral agreements, where basically the EU says, “Here’s the standard” and the Swiss government agrees. There’s a little more give and take when it’s EU-EFTA, but not so very much.
Uncle Cholmondeley
@trollhattan:
Mittens was quite the inspiration today. Here’s something else:
trollhattan
House GOP declares it’s 2004, gets to work on that mess.
They could have just said “insufficient understanding” and summarized, well, everything about themselves.
Lapassionara
@Suzanne: he can say nasty stuff about LGBT people without being called a bigot. He’s not afraid of hurting people’s feelings. He just wants to be rewarded for doing so.
Kent
It would really be poetic justice if he somehow also lands his ass in an Eastern European prison just like his fellow conservative and toxic misogynist Andrew Tate.
NotMax
@Hoodie
“Hey, what about us?”
– Lichtenstein
.
Subsole
@MattF:
A much smarter person than me once posited that all of this, from Musk to Volodja to Trump on down, is simple petulant lashing-out at the iron-shod immutable fact that they will never, ever, evereverever EVER be able to bully or buy their way into coolness.
It may be the ONLY thing they cannot bully or buy their way into, but there it is.
They will forever be the dorks that even the D&D kids don’t want to hang with. And I can say that because I was a D&D kid.
Just capital-L lames, the entire host of them.
trollhattan
@Uncle Cholmondeley: Nice. Popcorn time?
Guessing the NAACP Montana-Wyoming-Colorado chapter membership tilts towards Colorado.
trollhattan
@Kent: Can we make it a trifecta and have Michael Tracey arrested for skulking about in Poland?
laura
I’d have to work through a very long list of people to feel sorry for before I ever got down far enough to include Rod D. Using your religion as a cudgel just enrages me and so I save my sentiments for decent people and Rod D ain’t one of those.
My only Hungary story is second-hand; that back in the day, the Roadie Brothers got in a fist fight in a bar after a gig. Decent, charming, nice guy Harry Connick Jr. stepped in to try and settle it, but when informed that they were brothers, he stepped back and let the scrap run its course. The Brothers were thrilled to have met him given the circumstances and so, happily ever after.
Delk
Hahahaha… The Satanic Temple has named their first abortion clinic, “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic “.
Suzanne
@Baud: Oh, I’m sure that he did.
In so many ways, as an adult, I realize that it was a blessing to have to learn to go against the grain as a young person. It’s so pathetic, how many conservative religious people can’t bear to be around people who aren’t like them, because they can’t bear not being popular or esteemed. They have no sense of self. That leads them to bleat on and on about “thick communities” and all that shit, but it’s really about enforcing a social hierarchy. Genuine diversity tears down that social hierarchy.
Kent
@Suzanne: He dragged her and the kids down to rural Louisiana so he could bond with his family roots. Then after his family basically wanted nothing to do with him, he left his kids and bolted for Hungary.
And then he monetized the whole sorry saga by blogging and writing about it in detail.
Who wouldn’t want to divorce his ass after that showing?
Anoniminous
Ninja’d by The Doug.
Subsole
@Alison Rose:
The absolute Manliest of Man-Babies…
(H/T to J.S. Sterling)
@Baud: A number of replies leap to mind. The most diplomatic being:
“An that be the case, why did the sneering little jackass start a fight that he couldn’t afford to lose?? I mean, that sounds really g*d-damned stupid just on the face of it, Roderick.”
Suzanne
@Kent:
There’s some dude on Reddit who says that he knew Dreher back in school days and that Dreher identified as gay for some time. I have no idea if this is true, but I would not be surprised if it turned out to be true.
Ken
Will House Republicans revive the Lend-Lease program to send aid to Russia?
divF
@Steve in the ATL: Top professional vs. talented amateur.
gwangung
@Kent: Heh. I don’t have a problem with the first, but all the rest? Loser behavior, with a capital L.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Dreher is tiresome in ways that American converts to Russian flavors of Eastern Orthodoxy (particularly those who go to ROCOR) all too frequently demonstrate. They’re on ego-pleasing journeys of ersatz spirituality, may flirt with the more assholish parishes of Catholicism, and then get drawn by the “Smells and Bells” of the mature and predictable liturgical practice of Orthodoxy after somebody mentions it. They start reading ponderous ascetic tomes written by monastics with no clue about regular parish or family life.
They are really too far from the ethnic culture to be able to have internalized the example of those who successfully maneuver the spaces between cheerful, normal, healthy expressions of faith and works while being part of the larger community; they inevitably wind up resentful of the larger community and of the ethnic slackers who seem to enjoy having too much fun.
They bow deeper than everyone else at the Divine Liturgy. They attend several times weekly, including Advent Lent, fasting harder than anyone else (and force their families to suffer it as well). Their bookshelves are full of gigantic tomes written by antisocial, mentally ill whackjobs who wrote them in caves because humanity disappointed them. In your heart of hearts, you know they pray before their infrequent sex, and express contrition for an endless list of the pettiest of sins while consuming gigantic blocs of the priest’s schedule. They object to fun activities and festivals (particularly in multiethnic parishes in mid-sized cities of the Midwest), and become enthusiastic partisans for the elevation of convert bishops that may be unsuited for the ethnic culture of a parish.
Dreher is one of those.
My own family background is Syrian/Lebanese with a Greek root name – I’m attached to the Antiochian Patriarchate by family and temperament.
One of the funny things that has happened over the years – when I run into other men from my parish (some cousins, some unrelated) they ask if/when they can expect to see me standing there again. I say “I like my Sundays at leisure, and I’m just not feeling any real draw to anything involving Christianity these days”. They respond positively and say that everybody goes through that, no big deal, and its there if I want to come back as I get older.
I appreciate that, and it reflects what I’ve always observed about the older men and women from ethnic backgrounds here – not a lot of judgment about someone’s reasons. I doubt that the convert crowd would be as shoulder-shruggy about it.
Doug
@Suzanne: Hmm. I’m still in touch with two people who might have known him back then. I wonder if they have anything to say.
UncleEbeneezer
David Corn has a brutal fisking of Columbia Journal Review’s trumpeting of Trump’s “No Collusion” bullshit. Here’s a couple excerpts but read it in full, if you can:
“Throughout the four parts, Gerth lowballs the Russian attack on the election and Trump’s assistance. He quotes academic studies that conclude the secret Russian campaign to exploit social media—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube—to influence the election did not have a significant measurable impact. Yet he barely mentions the Russian hacking operation that led to WikiLeaks releasing daily derogatory material about Hillary Clinton in the final month of the campaign—including a trove of stolen documents dumped on the day the Washington Post revealed Trump’s Access Hollywood comments. (That move appeared to be a naked attempt to distract from Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” remark.) This is where Moscow undoubtedly got its biggest bang, producing weeks of negative stories that prevented the Clinton campaign from advancing its own messaging. The American political press eagerly lapped up these tidbits without highlighting the larger story that the scoops were the results of Russian information warfare mounted to shape the election. In a race as close as 2016, those weeks of bad press were likely one of several decisive factors that determined the outcome.”
…
In 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), released a bipartisan report that said that during the campaign Manafort “directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik (as well as Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine). The report characterized Kilimnik as a “Russian intelligence officer” and stated that he “likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Manafort, according to the committee, “sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik.” But that wasn’t all. Kilimink pressed Manafort to secure Trump’s endorsement of a proposal that would hand Russia influence over a large swath of Eastern Ukraine. Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor for Mueller’s investigation, later called this deal the “quo” that Putin wanted for the “quid” of helping Trump’s campaign. Gerth pays this no notice.”
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne:
Not just hurt feelings, but burn down potential employment options because no one wants to work with someone with serious issues surrounding LGBTQ+ people.
I can’t quite feel sorry for him either. I used to read him a lot because I wanted to understand a very different perspective than mine. He used to be good for that. He completely went off the deep end. Worse, he’s been the inspiration for Carlson and other right wing figures. I was seeing his trans-panic posts way before it became a thing right wing media and politicians fixated on. His theories and justifications have all been widely distributed through right wing media
I’ll add that I think its fair to bring up his failed marriage. This is a guy who didn’t believe in divorce until he needed one.
Andrya
@Kent: Not fair. In the early stages of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, when it wasn’t clear how bad the sex abuse problem was, Rod Dreher (a Catholic at the time) wrote a number of pieces in National Review exposing the abuses- at some risk of his job, for there was pressure on National Review to fire him. He defended Cardinal Pell because he believed Cardinal Pell was innocent. This is not inconsistent- I’m sure you are opposed to murder, but wouldn’t you defend someone you believed was falsely accused? I don’t know whether Pell was innocent or guilty- but when you say that Pell was convicted, it’s hardly fair to omit that the conviction was thrown out on appeal.
I don’t like what Rod Dreher writes- and I’m outraged by his propaganda urging the US to throw Ukraine under the bus- but demonizing our opponents with exaggerated/misleading accusations is what the other side does. The left should not be doing this.
C Stars
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing that.
Yes, Dreher’s a pedant and a pompous ass and it’s funny that his warm feelings for his sugar daddy Orban led him to say a little bit too much and have to censor himself. So much “freedom”!!
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Ah, the Sideshow Bob defense.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: I’d be very surprised if Dreher ever ‘identified’ as gay. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he was gay or bisexual and deeply uncomfortable with his feelings.
Sister Golden Bear
In today’s
ethnictrans cleansing news:On the plus side:
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Oh. Color me surprised.
Dreher Daddy was in the Klan.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-darkness-revealed/
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Agreed.
He blah blah blahs a lot about ketman, aka paying lip service to something in public that you don’t believe in private. It’s so weird. Like, the notion that, at work, you can just not talk about something contentious or controversial that doesn’t have anything to do with your work….has never occurred to him. He acts like it is an absolute Big Brother-esque crime to just leave your personal views about other people’s personal lives aside while you’re at work.
From the dawn of time, people have gotten fired from jobs if people think they’re an asshole. For whatever reason. But when it happens to Rod or Rod’s friends, it’s worth 10,000 words of waaaaaah.
Sister Golden Bear
@trollhattan: It’s the annual charging of PG&E for negligently causing murderous wildfire. A former commenter here who worked for them, aptly named them MurderCorp.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Andrya:
This is true.
pluky
@Baud: Banks
C Stars
@Alison Rose: Yeah. He used to publish on his American Conservative blog the writing of a woman who pretended to be the mother of a trans kid to infiltrate support groups (she was apparently snooping around in one that I was a part of, and revealed a local child’s story in of course a snide and cruel way). These people care so much about kids that they’re willing to deceive, snoop, and reveal private medical and other personal details about them to their snarling, violent, unhinged readers.
Suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I wouldn’t be surprised. Dreher has diarrhea of the mouth. I suspect that he has always lacked the impulse control between thinking and speaking or writing.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Well, in 2018, he admitted to being bad at sports, an inadequate hunter, too bookish and that as a namesake, he was a disappointment to his much-worshipped manly man daddy (who he didn’t realize had been in the Klan until somebody discovered it in FBI files last year).
Barbara
@Sister Golden Bear: Thanks for posting these updates — I have been trying to follow the Virginia bills, which I didn’t think had any real chance, but it’s good to know that they are dead, at least for now.
WaterGirl
@Delk: Good for them!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I’m halfway through that Dreher article and there are so many stupid, assinine assumptions he makes that I have to stop before my blood boils.
WaterGirl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Shorter:
You could have stopped there and it would still be true.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
As I think about it, the Klan thing infuriates me. Kids know about deep racial antipathies demonstrated by parents, and as they turn into adults, are willing to admit it and change the family tradition if they want to be seen as moral people. Dreher is such a preening moralist, yet has consistently toed the line on the soft side of white supremacy while never admitting that “Daddy hated people of color”.
The fucker is a liar.
C Stars
@Suzanne: “broken” is a good term for Dreher. So transparently hypocritical and corrupt, and seems to think no one can see it. Dreher’s New Clothes…
Old School
@Delk:
I like their cartoon. “If only abortion was legal when I was pregnant.
Edit: You can get it on a t-shirt!
Other MJS
@trollhattan:
So is Soylent Green.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’m guessing this was it.
“However, I came to change my views as I grew older, and began to know what I did not know. (And side note here: People today who think that nothing meaningful has changed in our country on the matter of race should reflect on what it was like to be a black man trying to get justice in a courtroom where the judge was also, under cover of darkness and cotton, a Klan leader.)
Specifically, as much as I hated to admit it, my dad, who had grown up in rural Louisiana, and who had spent his career as the chief public health officer for our parish, knew more about actual existing black people and their culture than I did — because he had lived among them all his life! For me, black people were mostly an abstraction. I had allowed the living, breathing human beings to be assimilated into an idea of Blackness — specifically, of black people as the eternal victims of white people. When I first discovered Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Enduring Chill” (PDF version here) (I hear that link doesn’t work; listen to Stephen Colbert read it aloud here), I was poleaxed, because O’Connor had seen right through me. It’s a story about Asbury, an intellectual son of rural Southerners, who goes off to college and comes home full of intellectual pride about how much smarter he is than his mother. Back on the farm, Asbury sought out the company of black farmhands, not because he wanted to know them as people, but because they were totems of his anger at his backwards mother, and of his pride that he was not a sinner like her.”
I’m shocked, shocked that a writer who goes out of his way to crush minority expressions and minimize tales of the extent of their suffering would have shifted his views toward those of the family members who perpetrate the crushing and the minimizing.
Sister Golden Bear
@Barbara: Erin Reed on Twitter does a monumental job of tracking all the anti-trans bills, she’s also on Substack.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Maybe? Southern White Supremists are weird. They can be kind and generous to ‘their blacks’, while violently hating the idea black people in any position of power ever. They can also have black people they grew up around that they are kind of fond of while believing every negative stereotype about black people as a group. Don’t expect it to make sense. It is a real thing, though.
Mike in NC
Putin sweating his “re-election” next year? Yeah, not much of a problem is it?
Thankfully we visited Budapest in 2010 before this Orban clown crawled out of his hole, and really enjoyed it. Back then I guess Tucker Carlson was still a long-haired faux libertarian with funny clothes. The good old days!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Yes.
Sister Golden Bear
Great summary of the “polite transphobia” of the FTFNYT and others:
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC: He was already a prominent figure and might still have been in his Soros phase at that point. He started out as a young firebrand liberal.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: This is so maddening.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
That’s my maternal grandfather in a nutshell. Used to drive the black man that my mother called “Uncle Levi” to the store and to vote (Levi had been a centenarian who had been born a slave here in Kentucky and been freed in his middle teens). Likely they voted opposite. He also got along famously with black men at the various industrial foundries he worked at.
They were, in his words, “the good ones”.
At the same time, he came up with the most hateful expressions about black people as a group, and had zero demonstrable empathy regarding protests.
WaterGirl
@Old School: @Delk:
Love that. Use their religious bullshit against them. See how they will like publicly funded satanic private schools. Bastards!
Princess
Am I the only one who thinks the reason Dreher is in Hungary is because of some really ugly scandal probably related to sex that people said they’d keep under wraps if he promised to stay out of the country?
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC: My bad, he turned conservative in about 1993. But he had already been prime minister 1998-2002, and won again in 2010.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Magyaloha.
Ruckus
@Splitting Image:
When a question like this is asked the answer is always – C – Both of the above.
C Stars
@Sister Golden Bear: Actually, I remember there used to be a commenter on Dreher’s blog who was trans but insisted he was the only one who was TRULY trans and therefore his transition was medically necessary, but everyone else was doing it out of peer pressure and fucked up societal gender roles. HE, personally, was the only person for whom it was OK. Imagine
ETA: I recalled that because of the excerpt you posted. “SOME kids really are trans. But some might not be!!! How could we (not parents, not medical providers, not fucking pediatric therapists) possibly know which are which???!!!”
Sister Golden Bear
And now Kansas gets into the act with ant-trans bills seeking to criminalize gender-affirming care and drag show performances for children, and a revised ban on transgender athletes. The trans bill appears to be a cookie-cutter copy of bills introduced in other states.
According to the Kansas City Star:
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
He’s deep, though, because he carried around a Flannery O’Connor short story collection as he developed his views – which he felt he had to tell us about.
Kent
To be perfectly correct, the Lend Lease program didn’t send aid to Russia. It sent aid to the USSR of which Ukraine was an equal part along with Russia. And we did so in order so that they could defend against an invading army bent on genocide.
1943-1945: Lend-Lease from the allies provided assistance to Ukraine and other soviet states to defend against an invading army bent on genocide.
2022-2023: NATO provides assistance to Ukraine to once again, defend against an invading army bent on genocide.
Entirely consistent.
Ruckus
@jackmac:
Does it really matter if there is an election or not in Russia? vlad is going to have to be carried out on a stretcher, with a blanket over his head to loose. And even then there is doubt as to if that will count.
C Stars
@Princess: I think he’s there because he couldn’t stand living in bumfuck Texas (after writing a book about how everyone should move to bumfuck Texas). And because, clearly, Orban pays him to be there and be a cheerleader for authoritarianism.
Sister Golden Bear
@C Stars: Sadly, there’s a few trans people like that, who insist their, and only their transition was medical necessary and the rest of us are denigrate perverts. Much like the “the only moral abortion is my own” anti-abortion activists.
Used to be more prominent 20 years ago, as a prime example of respectability politics. The notorious Harry Benjamin Syndrome trans women went down the rabbit hole of purity politics — it got to the point where not only did one have to have had bottom surgery to be a “true transsexual” you had to have bottom surgery with the right surgeons. ‘Course none of that mattered to the haters.
Ruckus
@Baud:
How difficult is that to imagine?
Kathleen
@piratedan: Has anyone seen both of them in the same room at the same time? There could be that.
Kent
No, it makes perfect sense. The definition of racism isn’t hatred. It is belief that a particular people are naturally inferior. You don’t have to hate your dog to believe that you are the intellectual superior. The southern form of racism can be very patronizing. Going back to minstrel shows, Aunt Jemima, etc. White people love them some Blacks who “know their place
Likewise, not all ethnic hatred is founded on racism. I expect that during Nazi regime, Jews hated Germans with every fiber of their body. And such hatred was justified. But it wasn’t based on an ideology of racial superiority or belief that Germans were an inferior race. It was because of how they behaved. In other words, Jews weren’t racist but Germans were.
C Stars
@Sister Golden Bear: I just read a fascinating profile of someone from that era, Virginia Price. Hopefully the link will go through: https://isaacs-law.ghost.io/whos-afraid-of-virginia-prince/
Barry
@Kent: “Rod Dreher arguably kickstarted the trans panic shit and he’s going to the floor for an actual, convicted pedophile”
Both for gay and trans people, the Right supports abuse and needs scapegoats.
trollhattan
@Kent:
OTOH Russian Lend-Lease to Ukraine program continues apace.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1620937064077479936?cxt=HHwWgMDSuf7q3P4sAAAA
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Outsourced their foreign policy to the Swiss.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: I read the NYT column referenced in that tweet a couple of days ago. IIRC, the person quoted in it is a physician who provides gender-affirming care.
That doesn’t mean she’s right, but is she a transphobe? Also, the main argument in the article is that schools shouldn’t have to inform parents of kids who want to socially transition at school if the kids ask them not to, which seems pro-trans to me.
I have seen what I’d call “polite transphobia” in the NYT, but if it’s in that particular column, it flew over my head. If you have the inclination to share your thoughts on it, what am I missing?
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: That Last of Us episodes was absolutely amazing. The joy, love, fear, loss, all universal things. Disgusted but not surprised the response. I’m glad that it made homophobes mad.
Bill Arnold
@Sister Golden Bear:
Thanks for these updates.
(Mood: wrath.)
UncleEbeneezer
Please proceed!!
BREAKING: The Manhattan DA is weighing new charges against Weisselberg for insurance fraud to pressure him to flip on trump.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: It’s not the first time that Bowers has essentially given aid and comfort to transphobes, however unintentionally. If you search her name on Twitter, dozens of top results are transphobes citing her words to defend their bigotry. It’s not my place to call out how she talks about such things, but it does seem like more care could be taken with her words, because she has to know how they’re used by the right.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: As Allejandra Caraballo noted, she omits the fact that kids/people have increased their identification as “LGB” at similar rates which suggests the obvious answer that the increase is simply because recent gains in acceptance and respect for LGBTQ people has made it safe for more people to be out. Skipping past that and framing her answer as if the increase is something that needs to figured out makes it sound like it must be a bad thing. There’s this ongoing framing that more people identifying as Transgender is a problem, that needs to be solved, shows up all the time in these articles. I think that’s what the Tweet is calling out as polite Transphobia.
Martin
So, not specific to Dreher – fuck that guy – but one of the things that has marked my retirement is the opportunity for introspection, which I have perhaps been taking too much time at doing.
I’m a proponent of the idea that most things in the world require a driving function. Not everyone or everything is as self-motived as we would like and it’s important that someone get up in your face now and then and scream “Hey, asshole, you gonna do something about this?” just as a courteous reminder that you can’t spend all day daydreaming about what the world would look like if the maximum voting age was 18.
I’ve come to a few conclusions:
I suspect a lot of the folks who get the stage either never bothered to do this either because they too were privileged enough to not need to. Maybe guys like Dreher are trying to sort it out now. It’d be nice if they’d shut the fuck up and do their soul searching in private rather than burdening us with their idiotic idle thoughts, though. And I suspect going down the mens rights path is just one track over – same driver, just a more damaging path to those around them.
But I have a lot of admiration for, and get a lot of inspiration by the folks that have at least made it a bit further along the journey than I have. Abigail Thorne’s coming out video is a good example. I’m not generally a fan of these things mostly because they feel self-indulgent in a way that I can’t relate with, but hers left me feeling as though she knows who she is better than I ever will know who I am. Pretty envious of that. Video makes me cry every time. Not envious of the journey, though. We do grind people up for sport, don’t we? Maddie Zahm has captured that for zoomers.
Martin concludes his indulgence.
X Foley 8
@Betty Cracker: Don’t sell yourself short. If Hunter S. Thompson and Molly Ivins had a daughter, her name would be Cracker.
C Stars
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t read the article/column because I don’t have an NYT subscription, but the person who excerpted it wrote a follow-up stating the following
And also refers to this piece (which I believe Sister Golden Bear posted last night) as the context for his criticism.
https://popula.com/2023/01/29/the-worst-thing-we-read-this-week-why-is-the-new-york-times-so-obsessed-with-trans-kids/
Basically, framing the issue of increasing numbers of trans kids feeling like it’s safe to come out as a mysterious or troubling trend presents being trans as a bad outcome, something to be avoided, a “social contagion.” And this posture of perplexed concern reinforces transphobia as well as directly echoing the kind of rhetoric used against gay people coming out in the 70s and 80s.
C Stars
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t read the article/column because I don’t have an NYT subscription, but the person who excerpted it wrote a follow-up stating the following
And also refers to this piece (which I believe Sister Golden Bear posted last night) as the context for his criticism.
https://popula.com/2023/01/29/the-worst-thing-we-read-this-week-why-is-the-new-york-times-so-obsessed-with-trans-kids/
Basically, framing the issue of increasing numbers of trans kids feeling like it’s safe to come out as a mysterious or troubling trend presents being trans as a bad outcome, something to be avoided, a “social contagion.” And this posture of perplexed concern reinforces transphobia as well as directly echoing the kind of rhetoric used against gay people coming out in the 70s and 80s.
Geminid
So read that Viktor Orban attended the meeting of the Organization of Turkic States in Tashkent, Uzbekistan last August and gave a speech. Hungary has observer status with the OTC along with Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turiye and host Uzbekistan are full members.
I had not thought of Hungary as a Turkic country, and it really isn’t. But it turns out that Orban believes in “Turanism,” a pseudo-scientific doctrine that the Hungarian Magyar people are of Turkic origin, despite the fact that aside from a few borrowed Turkish words their language is of the unrelated Finno-Ugric family.
All this says is that Orban is a wierd cat who has to fly a thousand miles to find a foreign audience willing to hear him.
I doubt if Mr. Putin happy to see this, though. Turkish President Erdogan seems to want this organization to supplant the security structure Russia set up with the former Soviet republics in Central Asia that they now want no part of.
Eduardo
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I found this unsurprising and expected. In my experience, post totalitarianism (early 1990s — present) a lot of Cuban homophobes treated “their” gays pretty well and lovingly. And the gays allowed them t love us even if we can see what was happening. If things get real tough again then the love will be gone rather quickly.
Sister Golden Bear
@C Stars: Virginia Prince was seminal, if sometimes problematic figure, as such individuals often are. But the trans right movement owes her a major debt.
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t read that particular column, so I can’t comment on it. But the NYT has had a spate of concern trolling argument of the past couple years. If the quote was from the column, I do think it’s a bit problematic, since it feeds into the narrative the NYT AND TERFs have been pushing: that there’s some mysterious reason that more kids are identifying as trans — while overlooking the obvious reason that more visibility means more kids can recognize who they are. Particularly annoying since Marci Bowers is trans herself. It’s like people fretting over the sudden increase in left-headed people after teachers stopped hitting kids with rulers for trying to write left handed. Second-best analogy I can make is it’s similar to how women (intentionally or not) can be sexist toward other women.
Sister Golden Bear
@UncleEbeneezer:
Nailed it. One of the TERF talking points is there’s a social contagion being pushed by dark forces — I.e. ordinary trans people living our lives — that’s “trans-ing” unsuspecting kids and something must be done about it. It’s not for nothing that one of the leading TERFs in the UK talked about the need to “reduce” the number of trans people.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: & @UncleEbeneezer: I see what you’re saying — thanks!
@X Foley 8: Thats probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you!
Juju
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Are you sure he needed a divorce and not his wife?
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: The thing is, I remember EXACTLY THE SAME THING being said about gayness in the 1980s and 1990s, and some of the same people who are now not at all concerned about that are furrowing their brows over some kind of insidious trans recruitment. I don’t get how they can be so self-unaware.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: Thanks! I agree the NYT overall is covering the issue in an irresponsible way — as if it’s a problem — and to the extent comments like Bowers’ contribute to the effort, that sucks.
Also agree that duh, more people are transitioning because more see it as an option. I do sometimes wonder if the gigantic increase in female > male transitions is related to the fact we live in a sexist AF country.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Abigail Thorn… Just seeing the incredible look of RELIEF on her face after she came out, which had never really been there in her earlier PhilosophyTube videos when she was, as she put it, “playing a character”, ought to be able to convince anyone that gender dysphoria is a thing.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: You’re welcome. It’s a subtle thing that’s really for those of us outside of that community to miss, which is one of the things that makes it such a dangerous and popular approach. If you haven’t read it already, this article that SGB shared yesterday has a very good and thorough summary of how bad the NYTimes (and The Atlantic too) have been with these Polite Transphobia framings.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Juju: Oh I’m sure his wife instigated the divorce. However, being married to someone who doesn’t want to be with you has got to be miserable. At some point, he would want to move on too.
waspuppet
That’s REAL freedom!
brantl
@NotMax: Bizarro universe Dale Carnegie.
sab
@lollipopguild: Ask the Brits about that.
pajaro
@Sister Golden Bear:
so the anti-drag show bills criminalize “any performance in which the performer exhibits a gender identity different from the one they were assigned at birth.”
Let’s just call this the “put Mrs. Doubtfire and Miss Trunchbull in jail” bills. I mean, what would they do with “The Marriage of Figaro,” where one of the characters is a man, who is played by a woman, who then deceives others by posing as a woman.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin: It’s definitely the same anti-gay arguments from the ’80s and ’90s being recycled as anti-trans arguments.
@Betty Cracker:
I’d say that’s more a factor in people assigned female at birth identifying as non-binary. Historically trans men were mostly invisible, and typically trans men have had a harder time realizing they’re trans because of the larger latitude afforded women.
One of the classic cases is a gender studies prof who’s doctoral thesis was about female-identifying women in Canada who were so masculine that they were regularly assumed to be men — and it still took him several years afterwards to realize he was a trans man.
Another factor is that trans men who were attracted to women,* usually identified historically as butch lesbians because that was the only model they saw of people similar to how they felt. Much of the “butch flight” occurred when some butches saw trans men and realized that who they were (being butch was something that never quite fit). Caveat: There are female and non-binary identified (and even some trans women) folks who identify as butches and have no desire to transition. A bit like some folks are truly bisexual, and it’s not a way station on the path to eventually identify as gay or lesbian.
*Trans men who were attracted to men were actually told by doctors back in the day that there was no way they could be trans because they identified as gay men.
Sister Golden Bear
@pajaro: Any number of Shakespearean plays would be banned as well.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: fortunately we in Kansas have a Democratic governor who vetoes the crazy stuff. And a noisy progressive delegation from the Kansas City suburbs who delight in pointing out the absurdities the conservatives dish out. They’re still dangerous, but there’s opposition.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gretchen: Thankful to hear.
Part of the strategy isn’t necessarily to succeed in passing these laws, but to move the Overton Window. Another part is passing laws in hopes will trigger a SCOTUS court case in their favor — much as they did with anti-abortion laws. Given the current SCOTUS, and the past prejudice several justices have publicly expressed, it may be a winning strategy for them.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: I think last year they found that there were all of four trans student athletes in Kansas last year, none of whom are at an elite level. All that to pick on four kids. The progressives and governor kept pointing out that the leg could spend its time constructively working to fund special education, which they hadn’t found time to do.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gretchen: Utah had one trans student athlete, also not elite, when their governor veto’d a bill last year.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: Kansas has a history of dealing with conservative trickery. We didn’t pay attention and they packed the school boards with creationists. We fought back and got sensible school boards, and learned that we have to pay attention to this stuff. We put up a fight on the abortion question, but even we who opposed the amendment were astonished to win by 19 points. Going in we all thought it would be close. We just have to get sensible people to keep paying attention. We outnumber the nuts.
PatrickG
@Sister Golden Bear:
a lurker here just saying how much I appreciate these updates. Please keep them coming!
Toocananj
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: His writing just gets worse and worse. I couldn’t make it through that disjointed mosh mash of unawareness and bullshit. 20 years ago, before the move back to LA, he at least could write and think. Now, the evidence indicates he can do neither.
superdestroyer
@C Stars: It will be interesting to see if Dreher goes back to Louisiana for his daughters high school graduation. That will be a huge tell about how Dreher feels about his daughter and how his kids feel about him.
Doug
@Suzanne: Someone got back to me and said that “identifying” would be too strong, but yeah. They also related second-hand that something apparently happened during college at LSU that drove him to the hard (you’ll pardon the word) right.
It’s funny that his famous book concerns Pope Benedict. I remember hearing Benedict on the radio one time when I lived in Munich, and spontaneously thinking that if you wanted a stereotypical accent of a Bavarian man of a certain age who was, shall we say in deference to his era, a little light on his feet, he would sound exactly like Benedict did.