Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Live Not By Defeatism

I'll admit, I didn't finish it. I finally had to put down Rod Dreher's latest funeral dirge, Live Not By Lies.

As usual for his work, it's deeply pessimistic. The secular world is going to crush us Christians with the help of the social justice left, Big Tech and the universities. Also, as usual, everything he says is correct. Finally, as usual, he leaves out anything hopeful.

The book takes interviews with survivors of communism and uses them to illustrate just what our future holds. Massive intrusion into our lives, demands that we espouse things that are untrue and prison if we don't. Some of that is accurate. Where I work, you do have to mouth utter nonsense such as men can become women. However, it is also true that you can freely mock that in the office. Even if you have an SJW or two around, they're not going to turn you in to the Stasi and even if HR came over to hassle you, there's a limit to what they'll do.

So yes, it's uncomfortable and yes, you have to endure the organization spouting lies, but no, it's not the same as being threatened with the gulag.

Rod's problem is not that he's misdiagnosed the disease, it's that it isn't fatal like he thinks. His remedies are always defensive, never offensive. I'll go into that more another time, but for now, allow me to share a funny video of someone who is fighting this stuff the right way.

Enjoy.


2 comments:

One Brow said...

As usual for his work, it's deeply pessimistic. The secular world is going to crush us Christians with the help of the social justice left, Big Tech and the universities. Also, as usual, everything he says is correct. Finally, as usual, he leaves out anything hopeful.

Well, that is what sells.

So yes, it's uncomfortable and yes, you have to endure the organization spouting lies, but no, it's not the same as being threatened with the gulag.

Well, we progressives have put up with what we thought were the lies of reactionaries for years (such as the notion that biology determines gender), so at least now that's working both ways.

tim eisele said...

"Finally, as usual, he leaves out anything hopeful."

I think that is intentional. I don't think his purpose is to actually solve anything that he sees to be a problem. His purpose is to find a way to wrap himself in the cloak of victimhood, so he can wail and gnash his teeth about how oppressed he and people like him are.

I personally think it is a cheap and shameless stunt, and he's far from the only one who does it. It is way too popular of a way to get a cheap hit of moral superiority, and distracts attention from the people that really are being oppressed.