As I’ve written before, some conservatives love to see themselves as persecuted. Now Rod Dreher and Erick Erickson have declared persecution is a good thing. It’s a sign the Christian is doing right, standing up for conservatives against people who disagree with them—ooops, I mean against people who hate Christians (Erickson’s claim) because who else would support gay rights or oppose anti-gay legislation? It’s not just a good thing—Christians should rejoice and embrace persecution because it proves their virtue!
In some ways this is the equivalent of all those right-wing pundits who called for people who weren’t them to go off and fight against Saddam. Erickson and Dreher are successful pundits with good jobs and comfortable lives; I don’t see any sign either of them is doing anything that would lead to actual persecution, even by the broadest definition. They only suffer because they have to seeing gay people walking around being gay without any consequences (and Dreher also hates seeing slutty girls who won’t take responsibility for being raped). Not exactly being thrown to the lions.
I suspect this is more in the nature of shoring up the troops, reassuring them that yes, they are being persecuted even if they’re sitting around comfortably. Erickson’s post is almost a caricature of attacks on liberals, condemning Christians who instead of fighting the gay agenda are “on birth control or watching whatever trendy HBO series is on or having a cocktail or perfectly willing to bake a cake for a gay wedding.” Which doesn’t make a lot of sense even so, but it’s the best explanation I can come up with.
As roy Edroso says at the link, this does not sound like a pitch for a movement that’s gaining converts.
Persecute me, please!
Filed under Politics
What few non-conservatives understand is that, for the most part, conservatives of many different stripes have considered Rod Dreher a self-parodying cartoon for quite a while now, the sort of character Matt Groenig would have populated Springfield with if Rod’s parents hadn’t beat him to it.
Oh, he’ll be cited as a conservative by Time or the BBC or wherever when they need a Rolodex conservative to add flavor to a piece, hit that check-off box and clock out for the day. But the reason Dreher is so easy to make fun of is that he comes pre-parodied at his own hand, like some pre-processed ground beef skillet additive. When it finally dawns on you that the guy works hard at being the attention-getting clown you’re mocking him for being, oversized shoes and bulbous red nose included, the joke’s ultimately on you.
Oh, I don’t doubt he works hard, and wants attention, but that’s pretty standard for pundits. As for being a joke, nothing he’s saying is that far out of line for right-wing pundits. Screams of persecution are a familiar right-wing trope, and the article I linked to is actually tamer than Erickson’s rant. Likewise being a rape apologist who whines about the evil gay agenda hardly makes Dreher an outlier. So please, detail what it is about his politics that makes him a joke.