The American Conservative Is Increasingly Insane

[LFC]

Then there's this religious freak melting down over Thanksgiving because, you know, when everybody else is celebrating it in a way he doesn't approve of it's an attack on religion and America ... or something.

Sure, there might be some spirituality left in the observance of Thanksgiving in some homes. Someone might say a brief grace before the meal, which will raise the level of discomfort by highlighting the divide between the portion of the family that still holds religious beliefs and the segment that has traded faith in God for the worship of the new deities: reason, secularism, empiricism, tolerance, and the Sanctity of Our Democracy. Maybe some aging aunt will force everyone to go through the antiquated process of naming “what we’re thankful for” this year. The kids will roll their eyes, but everyone will finally go through the motions: the quick sale of the house, an acceptance to grad school, a new job, PlayStation 5, our family.

If this sounds cynical, that’s because it is. The older I get the more I realize the great extent to which liberal secular society has hollowed out all the meaning from the annual celebrations that, in a healthy culture, served as a collective re-dedication to the shared values that formed the basis of who we were as a people: faith, family, freedom, etc. But as leftism has displaced the Christian faith that once defined the American character, we have slowly grown embarrassed of our holidays.

Columbus Day is well on its way to fully becoming “Indigenous People’s Day”—one more opportunity for Americans to flagellate themselves for the brutality that attended the founding of our nation. The Fourth of July hangs on, but it is on thin ice: the woke read on Independence Day is that it is a jingoistic celebration of toxic white masculinity, which formed the heart of the American Revolution and remains the driving force for American imperialism and neo-colonialism today. For some, Thanksgiving has become a memorialization of our shame, as the Thanksgiving story only brings to mind the near-annihilation of the Indians, who were sacrificed for Manifest Destiny and the acquisitive motives that fueled it.

Sadly, the moment when Aunt Mary asks everyone to think of what they’re thankful for isn’t a brief return to the true spirit of Thanksgiving: in fact, it is the mark of the triumph of secular liberalism in remaking the holiday. The holiday isn’t called “Thanksthinking.” The name of the celebration is Thanksgiving. This implies that the focus of the day is a particular action: a giving. A giving of what though? Our thanks. But to whom? This question hints at what has been erased from the holiday.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 21, 2022 19:27:26 GMT LFC said:

TAC seems to be going out of its way to find total whackjobs who can bind anything together with false equivalence. This one is an apparent Russian expat who is screeching that California handing ballots out to everybody is pretty much like Russia forcing people to vote or else. The comparison is particularly jarring and lacks even the most basic smoothing of the ridiculous edges. First she tells a story of her sister not voting and the local apparatchiks showing up at their door. That's followed by:

That family story no longer feels outlandish; in all but minutia, it has ceased to be a warning about socialism. 

That Soviet situation is now not so very different from the electoral process in, for example, California, where, two years ago, under the guise of a public health emergency, Governor Gavin Newsom authorized absentee ballots to be sent to every voter. It worked so well for him that he later made the change permanent. Conveniently, ballot harvesting, also called ballot trafficking, which allows the collection of mail-in voting ballots by a third party, had already been legalized in 2016.

Under the ballot trafficking regime, we don’t drag teenage girls out of bathtubs and send them in freezing cold temperatures to polling places with still-wet hair. Oh no, that would be rude. Instead, party and union functionaries arrive at their doorsteps to pick up the ballot—this type of coercion is far more gentle on all individuals involved. We may eschew certain cruel details of Soviet life, but the attack on privacy feels very Soviet and, more importantly, the negation of agency, the very essence of disenfranchisement, is the same. 

And then there's the lie about our elections being "increasingly opaque."

In the USSR, “elections” were play-acted to cover up autocracy. Alexei Yurchak explained in Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More how, in the 1970s and ’80s, the language of Soviet propaganda was designed to give the impression of stability, and the population was enlisted to reproduce slogans written by the Kremlin. Likewise, the results of Soviet “elections” were predetermined, but everyone was mired in the lie of participation, to help create the illusion of an indestructible regime. 

America today has a mirror problem. A sense of suspense around the key races is the norm—pundits generate attention-grabbing headlines, polls are interpreted every which way, and bets are placed on PredictIt.org. At the same time, the process itself is becoming increasingly opaque. With voting and balloting taking weeks if not months, many states have retired the idea of Election Day. The ballots can be returned in batches and stored in unsecured boxes. Cameras watching the uncounted ballots go dark in the middle of the night. Citizens are admonished to trust the experts, and reassured computers will not mess with the vote. 

This is not the idea of free and fair Western elections that was sold to us, the discontented in the USSR. A real election involves people going to the polls and casting their vote in privacy, but in a way that is observable, so that anyone can see that it is free of coercion. Paper ballots are tallied immediately after the precincts close. And, of course, a valid form of identification is required to vote. One day, one ballot, one voter, one ID. 

Multiple intentional deviations from this model raise doubts about whether what we are witnessing qualifies to be called an election at all. 

All I can say is that the author is clearly f***ed up, something that seems to be a requirement for TAC these days.

Except that no one comes to the door carrying something lethal to "remind" you to vote.  

Opacity?  None of those things happens.  At least in my state no ballot travels anywhere, even within the elections office, without 2 people going with it and documenting where they picked it (them up) and where they delivered it too. I wish my money being handled by a major bank were secured this way.  

What is observable about a polling place?  Has this guy never had a child who got a fake drivers license complete with photo?  

[LFC]

The attack on the gay nightclub in Colorado caused a major backlash on the LGBTQ haters. Perpetual and professional victim Rod Dreher had an absolute meltdown, grasping to the first obvious bullshit straw he could in this shrill, pathetic combo defense and attack. The title is eye opening as it is but the article is so, so much more less.

Colorado Springs & The Left’s Blood Libel
Court filings show the mass shooter identifies as non-binary. But the media and other left-wing figures have already blamed conservatives

Non-binary you say? How do we know?

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
@nickatnews

In new court filing, public defenders for the suspect in the mass shooting at a Colorado gay club that left 5 people dead say that their client is non-binary and that "they use they/them pronouns." The lawyers refer to their client as Mx. Anderson Aldrich.

Sadly for Rod a commenter points out that there's no past evidence of this and it looks like a pretty blatant ploy by Mx. Aldrich's attorney to avoid the hate crime charges. Rod sorta' kinda' accepts that well, maybe he isn't really non-binary after seeing an interview with the father but still does his best to take the blame off of those throwing blanket accusations of "grooming" at the entirety of LGBTQ people. Why would he do that? He believes it.

UPDATE.5: Shocking interview with the drug-addled, porn star, ex-con who is the estranged father of the Colorado shooter. Claims to be an anti-gay "conservative Republican". This raises the distinct possibility that his son is trolling by claiming to be non-binary. Whatever the truth, this scummy man may well have destroyed his son's mind, and life. If you are looking for someone to blame for poisoning the mind of that young man, look to this creep, not to Focus On The Family or Libs of Tiktok:

[LFC]

BTW the case of the Colorado killer who felt he needed to slaughter gay people kept Dreher over the edge for a couple of days. Here's another example whining that the Walmart shooting got less press. No clue that shootings like the one at Walmart are now a more than daily occurrence in this country. His go to suggestion of who you should watch for commentary? Tucker F***ing Carlson. He also screeches about the charge of stochastic terrorism despite spending much of his career accusing the left of that very thing except without using that term and with the silliest of bread crumbs for evidence.

The truth is, American society -- the Left, the Right, the middle, so very many of us -- is failing. We are conspicuously failing the young. It's so very easy for all of us -- I don't excuse myself either -- to jump to easy explanations of atrocities like Colorado Springs, not only to reinforce our own prejudices, but also to put an easy set of boundaries around radical evil, to make it seem controllable, and therefore less threatening to us. What deeply alarms me, though, is how the people who control the narrative-forming institutions of our society, and even now the institutions of state, especially criminal justice, have decided on a simplistic narrative that demonizes any and all people who challenge it. Tucker Carlson's monologue last night was chilling, and I hope you will watch it. He details how the Machine -- the media, a former senior FBI official, and others -- come together to demonize people who call out the insane sexualization of children, saying that noticing it and calling it evil means that we have blood on our hands, and should face penalties including civil liability.

This is what the whole "stochastic terrorism" smear is about: the idea, popular on the Left in the media, that even if you cannot logically blame conservatives for atrocities like Colorado Springs, it is nevertheless conservatives' fault, because they create a kind of ambient hatred. "Stochastic terrorism" is a magical word that allows the Left to smear everyone who disagrees with them, using a scientific-sounding Big Word that justifies their witch-hunting.

I'd also like to note that if he's going to launch into performative shrill whining about "insane sexualization of children" then maybe he needs to look at Christianity, the one that values female virginity to a level of perversion and which was pretty silent over the likes of Judge Roy "I want a child bride" Moore. THAT is some insane sexualization of children, and it is used to control literally their entire lives.

Over here and here he melts down about some f***ed up ad campaign by Balenciaga which, I must admit, I never heard of before. Here's the title and subtitle of the second link.

Balenciaga: Child Sacrifice, Cannibalism, & Couture

Even more sinister signaling from haute couturier's disgraced ad campaign sexualizing children

BTW here's the description in Wikipedia sans panty wetting.

Child advertising controversy
In November 2022, an advertising campaign posted on Balenciaga's Instagram account featured children holding teddy bears dressed in bondage. Gabriele Galimberti, the photographer, claimed the images were part of a project series called "Toy Stories". Balenciaga later apologized after heavy criticism and removed all posts connected to the photo campaign.[39][40] Hours later, Balenciaga apologized for a separate campaign, in which a prop promoting an Adidas handbag displays the text from a Supreme Court opinion in the Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition child pornography case.[41] The company replaced the advertisement with a photograph of a red-hair model holding a small top-handle bag. In the background of the new picture is a copy of the book Fire from the Sun by the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans. Some Twitter users said they thought paintings from this book were disturbing.[42]

Got that? Apparently most people thought the ad campaign was messed up so they pulled it and apologized. There's no sign of any of Rod's usual targets defending the campaign. But that doesn't help one feeling like the righteous victim.

It may sound mean but if this is how he now lives his life it's no wonder his wife and kids couldn't take it anymore.

[LFC]

I dropped by TAC to see if they were melting down over the EU smacking Viktor Orban on the nose. Nothing yet but Dreher is still wetting his panties over not negotiating with Russia because of course he is. Of course there's nothing really concrete from him or those he quotes on what the end-game of negotiations should be. Instead we get this hand-waving.

That Russia started this evil war cannot be disputed. But we desperately need to figure out a way to a cease fire and peace negotiations.

Now I think that's both naive and utterly dismissive of a host of Russian war crimes but it's not really fitting with the threads subject line by being "insane." No, the insanity is pure Rod and you know what that means; bashing the GAYS! Here he's talking about the people with the opposite view on the war and somehow manages to wedge in support of LGBTQ rights. It's beyond an obsession. Bonus points for also managing to mention George Soros. Maybe he's shooting for a job on Faux News OAN.

Good for him for doing so, but I am very pessimistic that this will change. Why? Because the elites in charge of our institutions, and the coming generation (Generation Z), are so driven by moral idealism that they no longer believe in fundamental liberal values and practices (e.g., freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and so forth). What "liberalism" means to them is total support for LGBT+, allowing the NGO class to determine governance priorities, and total support to the designs of Western oligarchs as long as they all fall on the left side of the political spectrum (George Soros and Jeff Bezos good; Elon Musk bad.)

[LFC]

I should point out that Dreher is not unique in the right-wing fever swamp when it comes to jamming the LGBTQ "agenda" into Putin's war on Ukraine. Here's Tuckums doing the same. Gotta' love the insanely overwrought term "World War Trans."

In the original tweet from Carlson’s show, the Fox host had laid out his dire, yet inaccurate, prediction that “our economy will crash.” The tweet included a caption: “Thanks to the Biden administration’s religious war, this country is about to run out of diesel fuel.”

About half way through the clip, Carlson explains how in his view the brutal, unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine is really a “religious war” being waged by the Democrats to spread their values.

“Anyone who’s paying attention has had to have wondered that. Well, this week, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, of Bethesda, answered that question. Russia is an orthodox Christian country with traditional social values. And for that reason, it must be destroyed no matter what the cost to us. So this is not a conventional war. This is a jihad. Jamie Raskin said that out loud,” Carlson claimed.

“But many in Washington agree with him in both parties. They would like to see World War Trans immediately,” added Carlson – echoing bizarre claims from Jordan Peterson over the summer that Vladimir Putin was somehow justified in invading Ukraine to stop the spread of “degenerate” Western culture.

“So, so what is this jihad going to mean for you? Well, the details are stunning,” Carlson began, warning everyday Americans of how their lives will change for the worse:

[goldenvalley]

Dec 1, 2022 22:09:56 GMT LFC said:

I dropped by TAC to see if they were melting down over the EU smacking Viktor Orban on the nose. Nothing yet but Dreher is still wetting his panties over not negotiating with Russia because of course he is. Of course there's nothing really concrete from him or those he quotes on what the end-game of negotiations should be. Instead we get this hand-waving.

Good for him for doing so, but I am very pessimistic that this will change. Why? Because the elites in charge of our institutions, and the coming generation (Generation Z), are so driven by moral idealism that they no longer believe in fundamental liberal values and practices (e.g., freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and so forth). What "liberalism" means to them is total support for LGBT+, allowing the NGO class to determine governance priorities, and total support to the designs of Western oligarchs as long as they all fall on the left side of the political spectrum (George Soros and Jeff Bezos good; Elon Musk bad.)

What about the fundamental right of a country to not be invaded by a neighboring country?  Guess that doesn't matter to Dreher unless the invading country did it with an army of LGBT+ soldiers.

[LFC]

Rod hasn't just lost his mind, he's lost his soul. He's now valuing lives without having an actual clue about who these people are or what has been going on in terms of negotiations literally for years. Notice the venom of "woke pothead lesbian basketball star." He clearly despises everything about her and his initial caveat that he's glad she's coming home is exposed as a lie since she clearly doesn't deserve it.

Look, I'm glad Brittney Griner is coming home, even though it's her own fault she was arrested in Moscow. She didn't deserve the sentence the Russians gave her. But I'm not at all pleased that Biden got the woke pothead lesbian basketball star out, but left behind US Marine Paul Whelan, who has been rotting in Russia for four years for a crime he says he didn't commit (nobody doubts that Griner was guilty of possessing an illegal cannabis product in Russia). But then, Paul Whelan is a white heterosexual man.

And I'm not happy in the least that the United States sent back Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer and extremely evil man, for ... Griner.

Now compare that to his description of "US Marine Paul Whelan." This is a man who is a convicted thief, a liar, and a scam artist who was court martialed and thrown out of the Marines with a Bad Conduct Discharge, one serious enough to have him stripped of his pension.

A military judge sitting as a special court martial convicted the appellant [Paul N. Whelan], consistent with his pleas, of attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another's social security number, and ten specifications of making and uttering checks without having sufficient funds in his account for payment … He was sentenced to 60 days restriction, reduction to pay grade E-4, and a bad-conduct discharge. 

But he's a clean cut, white, male heterosexual who "served" in the military so he's more important and more deserving. Can you imagine if the roles were reversed and Whelan was a sports star busted for hash oil and Griner was the disgraced marine? I can. He'd flip on a dime.

For a dose of truth here's Bill Richardson who has been the lead negotiator with Russia. The reality of the situation starts at 1:20. Putin killed the deal that would also have gotten Paul Whelan at the same time. Richardson has been working on his release for 4 years and Russia keeps throwing up roadblocks, not that people who "live by lies" would ever admit that. I believe they want an assassin arrested in 2019 for Whelan which is a much steeper price than a washed up arms dealer who has been out of the biz for over a decade.

Bill Richardson, who traveled to Moscow multiple times over the past few months, shares insight and details of the negotiations behind Brittney Griner’s release from Russian prison.

[LFC]

From TAC, The Red Wave That Wasn’t. Wanna' guess who's to blame? Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy for not being insane enough. Don't blame Trump. Yep, TAC wants to double down on the worst of the worst.

It wasn’t the midterm result Republicans expected in the final weeks of the election. Aside from bright spots in Florida and Ohio, Republicans struggled. Dr. Mehmet Oz was humiliated by an invalid in Pennsylvania; Doug Mastriano humiliated himself.

Republican voters did their part. When one accumulates the popular vote for House races across the country, Republicans won by three percentage points—a margin that was once just under five points but narrowed as votes from deep-blue districts trickled in over weeks after Election Day. That kind of turnout for Republicans “would normally translate into GOP gains of 20-30 seats,” according to the Cook Political Report. But Republicans have as of early December netted only eight seats, bringing their total in the House to 220. At most, Republicans will hold 222. In races that seemed to be easy flips, Republicans flopped.

Republican voters across the country are starving for some accountability, and justifiably so. They should look no further than GOP leadership, namely House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Throughout the 2022 midterms, GOP leadership gave exorbitantly to liberal and squishy Republicans—the type that would vote to codify same sex marriage—over America First candidates who wanted to take the party in a new direction. GOP leadership lit money on fire in the primaries to prevent America First candidates from making it to the general. When some of them made it through the primaries bloodied and bruised, McCarthy and McConnell filled their pots, put them over the fire, and left the room, only to return and try to save some of these candidates in the general election when they found themselves in hot water.

Don’t let the establishment blame former president Donald Trump. The only reason Republicans took the House was because Trump pulled several House Republicans across the line in 2020. The GOP’s overperformance with Trump on the ballot also gave Republicans redistricting power in crucial states like Arizona and Florida. But never mind all that: Candidate quality matters! these Republicans screech, blaming Trump for endorsing candidates the establishment always wanted to write off as fringe.

He describes Oz as an establishment Republican who didn't engage in the culture wars enough.

Establishment Republicans are correct in that candidate quality does matter—to a certain extent. Take Oz, for example. Some of the first skeptics after Trump’s Oz endorsement were the former president’s strongest supporters who were befuddled by the endorsement because Oz was a cookie-cutter corporate Republican who stayed out of the class and culture war. Trump’s endorsement of Oz certainly swayed the primary in the doctor’s favor, but Oz ultimately lost not because he was a paradigm-shifting America First candidate. Rather, Oz lost because he embraced an establishment Republicanism that made him unviable in a state like Pennsylvania.

[LFC]

Dec 9, 2022 21:49:25 GMT LFC said:

Rod hasn't just lost his mind, he's lost his soul. He's now valuing lives without having an actual clue about who these people are or what has been going on in terms of negotiations literally for years. Notice the venom of "woke pothead lesbian basketball star." He clearly despises everything about her and his initial caveat that he's glad she's coming home is exposed as a lie since she clearly doesn't deserve it.

Dreher has now become a Putin mouthpiece. It's best that he moved to Hungary. He's certainly not an American anymore. This is the entire post he put up.

The Three Problems Of Paul Whelan
Russians: He's white, he's male, and he's heterosexual. They understand Democratic Party politics

This woman understands Democratic Party politics:

[LFC]

With Musk unleashing the blatant liars and proponents of violence on the right while punishing those on the left who would dare criticize his greatness, I popped over to TAC to see what they had to say. Nothing about the recent blatantly transparent attacks but we have this whine about the nothing burger about how Twitter banned people in their time of sanity. Here's how their writer sees it.

You were right. You knew you were right. They knew you were right. They knew you knew you were right. And now we know. There’s proof. The “Twitter Files” confirm that behind the cloak of the algorithm, liberal employees of the tech giant were turning a nature preserve into their personal petting zoo, hiding the Hunter Biden laptop story, shadowbanning dissenting voices, and kicking a sitting president off the platform contrary to their own protocols. And, yes, they were up to their neck in government contacts, from the White House to the FBI, who requested and directed the restriction and manipulation of the public square. Now, of course, we are told by their colleagues in media and politics that these revelations are anticlimactic, that everyone knew Twitter had quality control procedures that, sure, might be described as shadowbanning but aren’t technically, since they get to make up the definitions. This, they insist, was all normal, things working as they were supposed to. 

His view of Musk's blatant politicization of Twitter is downright comical. The author must have been touching himself with a photo of Musk on his desk when he wrote this.

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter presents us with a positive reminder of this truth. A human individual, given the chance (money) and sufficient boldness and a drive for reform and mastery, can in fact lift Antaeus from the earth and wrestle a tech giant into submission. Musk’s fight is not over, and the Twitter Files are themselves an attack on the joints and sinews of his opponent, but he has shown thus far that he has the energy to continue through every round and will throw old Twitter from the ring. In this we see Musk exercise real power, for the true human sense of the word requires that two elements be present: energy capable of arresting inertia and redirecting the ordering of things, and an awareness of that potential, the will to achieve specific goals. This striving and power is a sort of celebration of the human spirit, the reality in the human individual that allows us to extricate ourselves from the immediacy of biological processes to shape ourselves and the natural world with technology in the first place. 

[LFC]

Of course no visit to TAC is complete without seeing Dreher's continued spiral into religious zealotry and untethering from reality. Most of it is his usual meh commentary but this is another snapshot into how badly religion, when taken too far and too far from reality, can rot the mind. Bold mine.

This has been getting a lot of commentary on Twitter, mostly people making fun of it:

Girls should bring up astrology on a first date.

Not because it’s an accurate measure of compatibility, but because it self-identifies men who are arrogant, condescending, and incapable of entertaining opinions they disagree with.

— Schrödinger’s Brat (@schrodingrsbrat) December 11, 2022

I think she's phrased this in an immature and foolish way, but that she's basically right. Frankly, if I were going on a first date, I would want to know if she took astrology seriously. In my case, it wouldn't be because I think astrology is silly (though I do); I could handle silliness. In fact, I like eccentricity! No, I would want to know if she is into astrology because though I think it is mostly silly, I also see it as a gateway into the occult. And that is an insurmountable barrier to a romantic relationship for me. Similarly, she would no doubt want to know that I am the kind of Christian who would not get into a romantic relationship with someone who even dabbles in the occult. If she finds that crazy, fair enough: we understand each other.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 16, 2022 17:00:31 GMT LFC said:

Of course no visit to TAC is complete without seeing Dreher's continued spiral into religious zealotry and untethering from reality. Most of it is his usual meh commentary but this is another snapshot into how badly religion, when taken too far and too far from reality, can rot the mind. Bold mine.

This has been getting a lot of commentary on Twitter, mostly people making fun of it:


I think she's phrased this in an immature and foolish way, but that she's basically right. Frankly, if I were going on a first date, I would want to know if she took astrology seriously. In my case, it wouldn't be because I think astrology is silly (though I do); I could handle silliness. In fact, I like eccentricity! No, I would want to know if she is into astrology because though I think it is mostly silly, I also see it as a gateway into the occult. And that is an insurmountable barrier to a romantic relationship for me. Similarly, she would no doubt want to know that I am the kind of Christian who would not get into a romantic relationship with someone who even dabbles in the occult. If she finds that crazy, fair enough: we understand each other.

As if someone into astrology would be interested in a romantic relationship with him!

[LFC]

Interestingly he talks about the possibility of finding love again. How hypocritical. Divorce is not approved of by either the Orthodox Church he currently belongs to or the Catholic Church he left over the pedophilia scandal, not over doctrine. He appears to have already forgotten that part of his doctrine and his divorce isn't even final. How ... convenient.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 16, 2022 18:59:56 GMT LFC said:

Interestingly he talks about the possibility of finding love again. How hypocritical. Divorce is not approved of by either the Orthodox Church he currently belongs to or the Catholic Church he left over the pedophilia scandal, not over doctrine. He appears to have already forgotten that part of his doctrine and his divorce isn't even final. How ... convenient.

Yeah I've seen overly religious types make excuses for why their divorce and remarriage is ok.  On the other hand I watched a neighbor's daughter come under pressure for dumping an abusive spouse 3 months after marriage.  "God put you together and God will help you work it out" her religious family said.  Yeah, right.  Abuse tends to escalate not disappear.

[golden_valley]

Dreher apparently ran athwart Hungarian protocol when it comes to quoting the Dear Leader of Hungary but he quickly adapted.  

These days Dreher has been attracting attention as something of an apologist for Prime Minister Orbán, who, Dreher claimed in a tweet last Thursday, has made Hungary “more free than many western liberal democracies that have surrendered to the dictatorship of woke.”

But later that same day, something else Dreher wrote caused a whole lot of trouble for his hosts in Hungary.

Last Thursday evening, Orbán invited the friendly foreign press to his office on the Castle Hill, perched high above the Hungarian capital. In keeping with what has become the accustomed practice in the Orbán era, the prime minister chose to share his ruminations about the current state of the world exclusively with reporters who would never dare to criticize him, but only nod with enthusiastic agreement instead. (This happy group included, in addition to Dreher, Sohrab Ahmari, Gladden Pappin, Roland Tichy, Boris Kálnoky, Ralf Schuler, Javier Villamor, and Jorge González-Gallarza Hdez.)

Dreher returned home to his apartment Thursday night and wrote down what he heard, publishing it in his American Conservative blog. Since Rod Dreher grew up in the United States, he didn’t know that in an autocratic country like Orbán’s Hungary, friendly agents in the media (I’m intentionally eschewing the word “journalist”) are not allowed to write down and publish exactly what they heard if it goes against the interests of their politicians/employers. (Such a blunder could never happen in a Hungarian paper controlled directly by Orbán. Even if a Hungarian equivalent to Dreher wrote an article that would be damaging for the Orbán government, editors working for the party-state would never let it see the light of day.)

Dreher quoted Orbán’s words: “We are in a war with Russia. That’s the reality. . . . Every day we are moving further in.”

Dreher quoted more about the EU and Hungary's potential status with it.

Yet Dreher quickly accommodated to the requirements the Orbán regime when, the day after his article appeared, the Hungarian and Ukraine news media started quoting from it. The Hungarian public was especially shocked by Orbán’s statements concerning the EU and the implication that Huxit—Hungary quitting the union—might be on the horizon. For the Ukrainians, currently under siege by the Russian army, Orbán’s sympathy for Putin rather than camaraderie and solidarity with Ukraine were considered the most appalling.

So Rod, employing a solution not uncommon in autocratic countries, rewrote the article to change its meaning. The original headline: “Viktor Orban: ‘We Are In A War With Russia’” was changed to “Viktor Orban: West Is ‘In A War With Russia,’” and Orbán’s lines about wanting to take Hungary out of the EU were replaced by the exact opposite,

[LFC]

Feb 6, 2023 23:01:28 GMT golden_valley said:

Dreher apparently ran athwart Hungarian protocol when it comes to quoting the Dear Leader of Hungary but he quickly adapted.  

These days Dreher has been attracting attention as something of an apologist for Prime Minister Orbán, who, Dreher claimed in a tweet last Thursday, has made Hungary “more free than many western liberal democracies that have surrendered to the dictatorship of woke.”

Yes, more free because he (except in this case) fits comfortably with the bullying power structure. Ask arrested and stomped on journalists, politicians, and protesters about just how free they are.

"When you are used to crave privilege being treating equally feels like oppression."

[goldenvalley]

Looks like Dreher is off the American Conservative because he got too weird.  Saw this in Vanity Fair of all places.

“It never got weird enough for me,” once spoken by Hunter S. Thompson, is an apt mantra for the dedicated fans of eccentric conservative blogger Rod Dreher. Over the last 12 years, Dreher, whose blog at The American Conservative will post for the last time Friday, has built a cult following with some of the most bizarre diatribes in opinion journalism. He has warned that so-called sissy hypnosis porn is “profoundly evil;” detailed the “formal” Catholic exorcism of a friend’s suicidal wife; and recalled—in unsettling detail—the time he witnessed a Black classmate's uncircumcised penis.

But one particular reader, upon reading the last of said posts, determined the blog had simply gotten too weird, according to two sources familiar with the publication. That disgruntled reader was Howard Ahmanson Jr., the heir to a California banking fortune and the sole benefactor of Dreher’s six-figure salary at TAC, which is published by American Ideas Institute, a nonprofit. This unique funding arrangement—a single donor choosing to cover one writer’s entire salary—was paired with an even more unusual editorial arrangement: Dreher was allowed to publish directly on TAC’s site without any revisions or legal oversight, according to the two sources.

Ahmanson had apparently long admired the work of Dreher, who has authored numerous conservative books and previously wrote for the Beliefnet blog and The Dallas Morning News. But according to the two sources, Ahmanson began to sour on his beneficiary in 2021, when Dreher, in a blog post debating circumcision, wrote the following: “All us boys wanted to stare at his primitive root wiener when we were at the urinal during recess, because it was monstrous. Nobody told us that wieners could look like that.” Incredibly, that was the “first red flag” for Ahmanson, one source told me, adding that the rift had been building for about a year.

Some of Dreher’s commentary on the gay and transgender communities also proved off-putting to Ahmanson, such as his lurid musings on anal sex, rectal bleeding, and the “partially rotted off” nose of a gay man who contracted monkeypox. “At some point, he basically decided, 'This is too weird,’” the source, paraphrasing Ahmanson, explained to me. “‘I don’t want to read this or pay for this anymore.’”

Dreher's going to SubStack like a lot of other bloggers now.  I assume that'll be a subscription set up. We'll see if he can attract enough to keep him going.  Oh and I guess he's getting something from someone to stay in Hungary even though as some posts in this thread point out...he ticked off the Hungarians by being too forthright about Orban's opinions.

[LFC]

If Dreher committed suicide with a note that admitted he was actually gay, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised. He's not so much disgusted with homosexuality (despite his claims) as much as he is obsessed by it, as well as all things that aren't basic man-woman missionary position only. He has serious issues and as he's gotten older has completely lost control over them.

Interestingly this does not seem to be an uncommon path for conservative writers. His buddy Eric Mataxis went down the crazy tubes. JD Vance went full blown MAGAt. And even George Will has proven himself to be incapable of accepting, or even listening to, the overwhelming evidence about global warming despite personal invitations from actual climate scientists. That doesn't mean all liberal writers are sane, but becoming ever nuttier seems to plague the conservative pundits.

[LFC]

On a side note the title piece at TAC right now is Transgenderism Must Be Eradicated written by somebody else. It seems that there will be more than enough crazy at TAC even without Rod.

[AnBr]

Mar 11, 2023 17:31:16 GMT LFC said:

That doesn't mean all liberal writers are sane, but becoming ever nuttier seems to plague the conservative pundits.

The end results of an echo chamber.

[LFC]

TAC continues to be insane, even without Dreher. Title, subtitle, and first two paragraphs are more than enough.

How Planned Parenthood Peddles Porn in Red States
A new report throws light on how Planned Parenthood uses federal programs to indoctrinate children in Idaho.

School libraries and grade school classrooms have become battlefields in America’s culture war. School districts from Broward County in Florida to West Ada School District outside of Boise, Idaho, have stocked pornographic books promoting transgenderism and gay sex. Curricula are curated to get kindergarteners to question their genders and third graders to think about anal sex. Parents are incredulous and irate—and wondering how it has come to this.

The ideology of sexual revolution does not drop down from the sky and land in a school library. There is a plan to bring sexual liberation down to earth. Planned Parenthood has long been in the business of mainstreaming transgenderism, the queer agenda, and “kinky” sex. It has gained such power through strategic control of the administrative state, as we show in our new report from the Claremont Institute.

Oh, yeah. Claremont Institute. Now theeeeere's a reliable source of truth.

[LFC]

As expected Rod Dreher is still insane, even after losing his sugar daddy who kept him employed at TAC. Now he's practically touching himself over Tucker Carlson being available to run for president. Reading this only reinforces my belief that he is deeeeeeep in the closet (along with his daddy issues), but not so deep he can keep it completely hidden. Typical, it ain't Rod if it doesn't contain a form of the word "woke."

Absolutely stunning news about Carlson’s leaving Fox. As of this writing, there is no indication of why he and Fox have separated, or who initiated it, though one has to assume that it was Fox corporate, given the circumstances. Was it because of the Dominion lawsuit settlement? Was firing Tucker one of the demands Fox agreed to? Or was it the case that facing such a massive payout — I think worth 25 percent of the entire value of Fox News — they couldn’t afford any longer to keep on a host whose show, despite being the top rated in cable news, lost money.

Did you know that? Yes, it’s true. The Left’s boycott threats intimidated woke capitalists, who declined to advertise on his show. The advertisers he did have, I understand (though not from him), paid a bargain rate. I don’t know if the show cost Fox money, but it wasn’t making them much, despite the blockbuster ratings.

Rod has at least come out as full blown MAGA, if not Trump. I don't think Trump is cute enough for him. Tuckums his more his type and he has "charisma to burn." I guess being a smarmy douche nozzle is Rod's definition of charisma.

Think about it: Trump is at this point the favorite to win the GOP nomination. He has just that much of a hold over the MAGA audience. He would lose to Biden, no doubt. DeSantis was supposed to be the savior — Smart MAGA, without the Trump drama, with a very good chance to beat the elderly Democratic incumbent. But he’s been choking so far in facing up to Trump, and there are serious concerns that his lack of charisma is going to get him walloped by Trump. It already is.

As you know, I’m a DeSantis backer, but at this point, less than a year before the first primaries, it’s looking like Trump is going to beat DeSantis like a drum, and DeSantis isn’t going to know how to handle him. I did not expect that, but here we are. This is an opportunity for someone.

Enter Tucker Carlson, who is like no one else on the Right. Nobody can question his MAGA credentials, and his anti-establishment populism. But he’s also not dumb about MAGA, either. Nobody can doubt his charisma, or his boldness. His show has been pretty much the only place in the mainstream media where you could find people of the Left who questioned the Narrative on war, for example. He would be the anti-Deep State president that Trump only pretended to be — or perhaps wanted to be, but was too distracted by his own weaknesses.

Could he take down Trump? I think he could. I think he understands Trump very well — his strengths and his weaknesses. And he’s very quick on his feet, Tucker is, in a way DeSantis is not. And he has charisma to burn.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 25, 2023 20:12:29 GMT LFC said:

Rod has at least come out as full blown MAGA, if not Trump. I don't think Trump is cute enough for him. Tuckums his more his type and he has "charisma to burn." I guess being a smarmy douche nozzle is Rod's definition of charisma.

Trump is emblematic of the guys that bullied Dreher in his youth.  Tuckums was a smart dude who perhaps was only an intellectual bully who wouldn't threaten Dreher physically.