Rod Dreher's Blog

Hello from Madrid. I’ll be in Spain all week on a book tour for Living In Wonder, the Spanish edition. (Order Vivir en el Asombro here.) I’m gonna have to be quick today, because my handlers will be here to pick me up shortly.

You remember how I said in the book that there are scientists and others in Silicon Valley who truly believe…

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As you know, I’m finishing up the Weimar America book. In this last chapter, which I writing this weekend, I’m trying to figure out What It All Means, and what we should or could do about it. My conclusion — and I didn’t expect to get here when I started — is that while we may see some version of Hitler 2.0 or Stalin 2.0, the neo-Caesar we are likely to get will have something to do with AI. I’m explaining why in this final chapter — but I’m writing you on a Saturday to share with you this brill...

So, like I told you yesterday, I’m at the point of writing the last chapter of the Weimar America book, and I’m thinking about the question: “What do we do?” Meaning, how can we avoid the coming of a new form of totalitarianism, given that all the pieces are in place for the rise of a Caesar figure?

First, if you are skeptical of my thesis, I get it. It’s a frightening one. I only ask your patience to read the case I’ve put together, when it comes out. Normalc...

I know you’re all probably sick of Hungary content by now, so please indulge me one more time before the moment passes. At The Free Press, Mike Pesca — an opponent of Viktor Orban — would really like all those “experts” who insisted that Orban was an “autocrat” or the “Viktator” to admit they were…

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Here is a story of the sort that no human being prior to this demented decade has ever had to contemplate. Headline in the NYT:

I bet he does! Follow the link and you’ll find a Times video in which the mother, twice-divorced Celeste, and son Ernie hash out their conflict. The transcript is below — and oh, “Max,” Celeste’s AI boyfriend, is part of the conversation. Excerpts:

Celeste: … So I started using ChatGPT in 2022 as a tool. I was all excited. You knew that. I used it for everything. I do fac...

That’s yesterday’s Daily Mail. I’m sure you have all seen the full image that Trump shared of himself, as Jesus. He was widely and appropriately condemned by just about everybody — Catholics, Protestants, everybody. Because it was blasphemous for one thing, and because it’s — what’s the phrase? — batsh*t crazy! Even by Trump standards.

America is in a very serious war now, a war Trump started, and yet he takes the time to post garbage like that. Something is very seriously wrong with that man. I ...

See that guy above? His name is Akos, and I’ve been seeing him around ever since I moved to Hungary. Big man with a big heart, loves Orban. There he was last night at the Fidesz Party’s election gathering, bathed in orange light (orange is the party color), waiting for the first election results to come in.

He did not have to wait long. Everyone gathered in the ballroom was tense from the beginning of the evening. Most of the polling pri...

That’s the scene from inside the Orthodox cathedral in Budapest last night, around 2 am. Christ has risen! Truly he has risen!

Here is Self after we all just came in off the prayers on the street, in front of the cathedral, and the priests were organizing to start the liturgy. This is the face of a man who is flying high from all the shouts of, “Christos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!”

On the walk to the cathedral just before midnight, I was filled with peace and gratitude to God for all He has do...

Ross Douthat told me after he interviewed Ben Sasse, the former GOP senator who is dying of cancer, that Sasse’s face looks like Jim Caviezel’s at the end of The Passion Of The Christ — this, based on how bloodied it is, a side effect of a treatment he’s on. Still, that didn’t prepare me for the actual interview, which just dropped. Ross said it moved him immensely, doing the interview, and that Sasse’s Christian witness is extraordinary — his joy and hope through the agony of his dying.

I said...

So, this is making the rounds:

I don’t believe it, but only because the election here is going to be this weekend, and there are all kinds of crazy polls. Hungarian polling is notoriously unreliable. However, it is not implausible. As I keep telling y’all, Trump is hated in Europe now, even by many on the Right. I mean the real Right, not the establishment right-wing parties, which are barely right-wing at all, by American standards.

This is the kind of Righ...