Out of the Closet

I’m a closeted fan of Rod Dreher’s blog. 

The fellow and I couldn’t be further apart ideologically. He hates women, he is creepily obsessed with gay people, he keeps saying silly, uninformed things about the evil Russian Orthodox Church, he constantly does the deeply annoying “Trump is not that bad” thing. I could keep listing the areas of my disagreement with him forever. 

But I love the blog. It’s currently my favorite non-academic blog.

First of all, I like the blog because Dreher writes very well. His writing is passionate, and I dig that. 

Second, he is a seeker, and that’s my favorite kind of person. I love it when people keep looking for answers, reading, thinking, coming up with something new. Dreher is the only blogger other than me who reads Bauman and talks about liquid modernity. He reads a ton of other stuff. I can’t stand people who have already found an answer to everything and repeat the same ancient pseudo-insight for years. I actually unfollow bloggers who repeat the same idea without any variation for over half a dozen times. 

Another thing that I like about this blog is precisely that it’s so different from anything I know. It’s a different world with the kind of people I never meet. And thanks to Dreher’s blog, I now understand the anxieties of the religious people a lot better. I now know that they are not crazy, and many of their concerns are real and worthy of respect. (Obviously, I don’t mean the obsession with gay people.)

So the reason I’m sharing all this is a funny encounter I just had. A fellow academic who is super-duper ultra-liberal said, “There is this blogger called Rod Dreher, and he’s just the worst!” Then, the academic went on to quote one of Dreher’s posts after another, demonstrating a stunning familiarity with the blog. 

“I see you read him a lot,” I remarked. 

“I know,” my colleague said, looking puzzled. “I can’t explain it. I disagree with almost everything but this is my favorite blog. No offense.”