I completely dispute your dismissal of Dumezil and his relevance to modern scholarly work, particularly in the field of Indo-European studies, being referenced in citations by David W. Anthony and Roger D. Woodward. Furthermore, a proper knowledge of Dumezil's work would show that the the three functions theory was specifically applied to Indo-European society, and was never more than a guide post to understand the way those societies organized themselves, along the lines of grammar and spelling rules that may have a lot of exceptions, but as a general guide, are incredibly useful in getting helping people write, speak, and spell well. The craze of shoving every little thing into one of the three functions was largely the result of those who came after him, and a lot of the criticism of Dumezilian work has more to do with those ideas, than any attributed to the man himself.
Politics, entertainment, etc are all comprised of ritual. Furthermore, the constant refrain of understanding myth and ritual is to underscore the importance of understanding that the flow of information is from Ritual to Myth. As ritual changes, Myth adapts. Myth explains things, it doesn't cause them. One must come to understand that idea or any attempt at analysis of Myth is doomed. And this isn't simply a Dumezilian idea, by the way, this comes from Burket, Girard, and others whose work are targeted in other aspects of analyzing ritual.
Red means many things, yes, but commonly across all Indo-European religions, we see Red as signifying warrior aspects and warfare in general. Furthermore, Þórr's function as the beater of the bounds, the guardian at the fence meshes nicely with Mars's in the Carmen Arvala, or Indra's role as serpent slayer. The idea of an Indo-European root for all three gods means that we can look at the data, and not just one set of data, but all of them, and draw conclusions based on that information.
I say if we don't stop applying structuralist theories from outdated scholars and start actuallly looking at the data then we will never understand the religion.
I say if you don't broaden your horizon and accept that some parts of these theories are not only insightful, but foundational as well, you're never going to understand the religion. The Germanic religion, is but one facet of a host of related concepts and ideas that stretch back thousands of years into the Pontic-Caspian steppes. And while we may choose not to incorporate ideas from other Indo-European peoples, we cannot ignore them. They must be examined, grappled with, or we will constantly be hobbled in our understanding. If I write fiction, but do not read outside the genre of fiction I happen to write, I am functionally hindered by my myopia. If I build furniture, but do not research furniture outside the style I happen to build in, I will never grow as a woodworker. And so on and so forth.