Macrobius
Megaphoron
(Review of the Boniface Option by the author of the Benedict Option)
> This is a book written by an angry young man, for angry young men. I don’t say that to criticize, but to observe. If you aren’t Very Online, you will wonder why the word “bugman” keeps popping up, and “globohomo,” as well as other terms and phrases familiar to memelords.
roddreher.substack.com
The Boniface Option is a strange book. I’d say eighty percent of it already appeared in The Benedict Option (I’m certainly not accusing author Andrew Isker of plagiarism; I’m simply saying that the ideas are not new). But this book is just over half as long, and the ideas have been re-imagined here as pugnacious and resentful. If you had ever wondered how The Benedict Option would have been if its author were a late-millennial Calvinist Memelord Of Moscow, Idaho, well, now you have your answer.
Let me emphasize at the top of this review that I share Isker’s strong distaste for what he calls “Trashworld”: this decadent, hedonistic, lawless culture that dominates the post-Christian West. If you are a serious Christian, how could you not? Isker, who only focuses on his fellow Protestants, has a special loathing for Evangelicals he believes to be weak, winsome compromisers. And look, I share his frustration with these fellow believers, who sometimes act as if they care more about being nice than being holy. How is it that America has become a country where children are sexually mutilated, and in some states can be seized from their parents for this purpose, and most Christians — even conservative ones, of all churches — just shrug? What the hell is wrong with us?
Though Isker is co-author of a previous volume about Christian nationalism, The Boniface Option is not remotely a rah-rah, Jesus-Is-American tract. He writes to bash people on the left and right who believe in spreading “our values” as Americans to the rest of the world:
Because this review is mostly critical, I want to go on record here affirming that broadly speaking, I share Andrew Isker’s disgust with the world as it is. What sets us apart is mostly what to do about it. I say “mostly” because even I, on my angriest days, can’t come close to mustering the rage Isker brings to nearly every page in this book.
Isker is a sharp writer, but an undisciplined one. The choleric contempt suffusing The Boniface Option — henceforth, the Bon Op — is ultimately alienating. For most of the book, I found myself nodding along, saying, “Yeah, he’s right about that.” But over and over, Isker — a young Minnesota pastor who was trained by the ever-combative Douglas Wilson — undermines his case by responding with febrile intensity. Here’s a typical line: "Men with the spirit of holy war within them will be what brings down the idols of this fetid, corpulent, repulsive world."
Gosh. There’s a lot of that in the pages of this short book. The word “disgusting” appears eleven times. The phrase “disgusting world of filth,” three times; the word “hate,” thirty-nine times. You get the feeling that Isker wrote this with trembling fingers, two tics away from a gran mal seizure, and had to summon everything he had to keep himself from agonizing over threats to our precious bodily fluids.
(You think I’m kidding? A pretty good chapter on how conservatives ought to care about the kind of food we produce and eat — I got there first in Crunchy Cons (2006) — goes off the rails with speculation about how seed oils might have sapped the testosterone supply in menfolk. I know that seed oils is a thing these days among a certain faction of the Very Online Right, but in a book of only 150 pages about how Christians should respond aggressively to the collapse of our civilizational order, this is … weird.)
This is a book written by an angry young man, for angry young men. I don’t say that to criticize, but to observe. If you aren’t Very Online, you will wonder why the word “bugman” keeps popping up, and “globohomo,” as well as other terms and phrases familiar to memelords. Here’s a passage:
I get all that. These are interesting points. But simply as a matter of rhetorical choice, it is hard to take seriously a book whose author points to the decadent culture around us and sneers, “It’s fake and gay!” The Boniface Option is not a book that tries to win readers over — except for those capable of being insulted and humiliated into capitulation — but rather to rally the already-converted. And men. Isker laments the fact that women gained the right to vote, because it violates his ideal of patriarchy. He implicates women’s suffrage in the outbreak of child transgenderism. It’s that kind of book.
Here is how Isker encourages his readers to abandon public education for Christian schooling:
...
Rest at the link
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> This is a book written by an angry young man, for angry young men. I don’t say that to criticize, but to observe. If you aren’t Very Online, you will wonder why the word “bugman” keeps popping up, and “globohomo,” as well as other terms and phrases familiar to memelords.
Reviewing 'The Boniface Option'
If 'The Ben Op' Was By A Brawly Calvinist Memelord From Moscow, Idaho...
roddreher.substack.com
The Boniface Option is a strange book. I’d say eighty percent of it already appeared in The Benedict Option (I’m certainly not accusing author Andrew Isker of plagiarism; I’m simply saying that the ideas are not new). But this book is just over half as long, and the ideas have been re-imagined here as pugnacious and resentful. If you had ever wondered how The Benedict Option would have been if its author were a late-millennial Calvinist Memelord Of Moscow, Idaho, well, now you have your answer.
Let me emphasize at the top of this review that I share Isker’s strong distaste for what he calls “Trashworld”: this decadent, hedonistic, lawless culture that dominates the post-Christian West. If you are a serious Christian, how could you not? Isker, who only focuses on his fellow Protestants, has a special loathing for Evangelicals he believes to be weak, winsome compromisers. And look, I share his frustration with these fellow believers, who sometimes act as if they care more about being nice than being holy. How is it that America has become a country where children are sexually mutilated, and in some states can be seized from their parents for this purpose, and most Christians — even conservative ones, of all churches — just shrug? What the hell is wrong with us?
Though Isker is co-author of a previous volume about Christian nationalism, The Boniface Option is not remotely a rah-rah, Jesus-Is-American tract. He writes to bash people on the left and right who believe in spreading “our values” as Americans to the rest of the world:
That’s pungent stuff, and he’s right. I was surprised but pleased to see Isker rolling his eyes at Christian conservatives who cope with our impoverishment and disinheritance by telling themselves that widespread gun ownership indicates that our tribe can only be pushed so far. The pastor writes, “If mutilating the genitals of children isn’t enough to motivate the conservative masses into violent revolt, nothing is going to cause that.”
Because this review is mostly critical, I want to go on record here affirming that broadly speaking, I share Andrew Isker’s disgust with the world as it is. What sets us apart is mostly what to do about it. I say “mostly” because even I, on my angriest days, can’t come close to mustering the rage Isker brings to nearly every page in this book.
Isker is a sharp writer, but an undisciplined one. The choleric contempt suffusing The Boniface Option — henceforth, the Bon Op — is ultimately alienating. For most of the book, I found myself nodding along, saying, “Yeah, he’s right about that.” But over and over, Isker — a young Minnesota pastor who was trained by the ever-combative Douglas Wilson — undermines his case by responding with febrile intensity. Here’s a typical line: "Men with the spirit of holy war within them will be what brings down the idols of this fetid, corpulent, repulsive world."
Gosh. There’s a lot of that in the pages of this short book. The word “disgusting” appears eleven times. The phrase “disgusting world of filth,” three times; the word “hate,” thirty-nine times. You get the feeling that Isker wrote this with trembling fingers, two tics away from a gran mal seizure, and had to summon everything he had to keep himself from agonizing over threats to our precious bodily fluids.
(You think I’m kidding? A pretty good chapter on how conservatives ought to care about the kind of food we produce and eat — I got there first in Crunchy Cons (2006) — goes off the rails with speculation about how seed oils might have sapped the testosterone supply in menfolk. I know that seed oils is a thing these days among a certain faction of the Very Online Right, but in a book of only 150 pages about how Christians should respond aggressively to the collapse of our civilizational order, this is … weird.)
This is a book written by an angry young man, for angry young men. I don’t say that to criticize, but to observe. If you aren’t Very Online, you will wonder why the word “bugman” keeps popping up, and “globohomo,” as well as other terms and phrases familiar to memelords. Here’s a passage:
That’s the “fake” — and it’s a good insight. Isker’s explanation of how he uses “gay” in this sense is also fairly insightful, in a similar sense as how Dante construed homosexuality in the Divine Comedy. I’m serious. In the Commedia, Dante’s punishment for the “sodomites” reflects their restless and fruitless search for pleasurable experiences. In the Commedia, sodomy is foremost a spiritual orientation. For his part, Isker says the dominant culture today wants to make us “spiritually homosexual,” in the sense that we are “uprooted and alone,” and “only concerned with satisfying [our] immediate desires.”
I get all that. These are interesting points. But simply as a matter of rhetorical choice, it is hard to take seriously a book whose author points to the decadent culture around us and sneers, “It’s fake and gay!” The Boniface Option is not a book that tries to win readers over — except for those capable of being insulted and humiliated into capitulation — but rather to rally the already-converted. And men. Isker laments the fact that women gained the right to vote, because it violates his ideal of patriarchy. He implicates women’s suffrage in the outbreak of child transgenderism. It’s that kind of book.
Here is how Isker encourages his readers to abandon public education for Christian schooling:
...
Rest at the link
- 30 -
