Alexandra Wolfe reviews Dan Crenshaw's new book:
His book "Fortitude: American Relience in the Era of Outrage" [is] part memoir, part instruction manual about his ability to weather hardships in life and in battle and his advice on how others can do the same. The book is also a critique of what he calls "outrage culture," or what he sees as an alarming tendency . . .
. . . by some media outlets and much of social media to provoke unhelpful and overblown emotional responses.
. . . .
Mr. Crenshaw argues that taking pleasure in anger and outrage has permeated American culture. "Pop culture used to be apolitical, but it's just not anymore," he says. "This is the fault of the pop-culture icons entirely, because they keep mouthing off and choosing a side, and in doing so, they're alienating half the population.
. . . .
Mr. Crenshaw is trying to model the relience he preaches. Overly emotional reactions to crises, he finds, are fruitless. But how can you tell someone who isn't already a Navy SEAL to just stop panicking? "You stop yourself," he says. "You think about who you want to be, and that you want to be someone who doesn't panic, and then you don't."
It's also a matter of perspective. "You could tell the story of my life as a succession of hard times and heavy burdens," he writes. "My mom died . . . my eye got blown out, my active commission got taken away." Instead, he chooses to focus on what he can control rather than what he can't. "I don't have to wake up nearly blind every morning," he writes. "I get to appreciate the gift of sight -- any sight at all."
Alexandra Wolfe, "Dan Crenshaw: A wounded Navy SEAL turned politician offers lessons in resilience," Review, The Wall Street Journal., April 4-5, 2020, paywalled, unfortunately.
Representative Crenshaw exemplifies what were once called masculine virtues. The review makes clear, however, that he learned them, in part, from his mother.
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