To be fair to Dreher, the headline was “Putin, our Tsar Protector?” and the question mark is there because it was a deliberate caricaturing exaggeration of what he was saying.
But yeah what I love about Dreher is that he writes honestly about how he feels about the world. He is an emotional guy and he is not afraid to put that on paper without dissembling or self-censoring. And what makes him fascinating is that he thinks he’s writing about world events and politics and whatnot, but what he’s always writing about is his own psychodrama projected out onto the world. His pieces aren’t really about what Drag Queen Story Hour says about society, they’re about how Drag Queen Story Hour makes Rod Dreher feel and what that says about Rod Dreher. But critically, Rod himself is not aware of this.
A figure that looms large in Rod’s world is his father, who was? is? an absolute asshole in the first degree, and emotionally (and I would guess physically) abused Rod for being an effeminate queer who was interested in creative rather than masculine pursuits. Rod’s whole conception of society is that it will find happiness and fulfilment by submitting itself to some authority representing tradition and the masculine, but that Rod instead deeply fears that it is descending into degeneracy and effeminacy and that the wrath visited upon it for these sins will be terrible. This is just Rod’s childhood projected out onto the entire world. Of course the role of authority is usually occupied by God, but a figure like Putin who represents atavistic, traditional society can also be a focal point. The fact that, like God, he’s also a frightening figure I think makes him more magnetic to Rod.