{"id":20931,"date":"2015-05-07T01:02:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T08:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=20931"},"modified":"2017-08-18T10:07:59","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:07:59","slug":"oh-the-wearying-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/07\/oh-the-wearying-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the wearying rage"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: August 18, 2017.<\/strong><\/strong> Christopher Cantwell — an angry supposed libertarian at the time I wrote this post — has since moved into the dark world of white supremacy and hatred of Jews. This is the second time I’ve known someone to do this. It’s incomprehensible to me how someone could rush (and in both cases they did rush) from individualist to the worst sort of collectivist. All I can say is that in both cases the a**holes in question were consumed with anger even before they made the change. When I write this post back in 2015, I found Cantwell exhausting, but interesting. Now? He’s merely one more repellent group-thinker, eaten alive by his own loathing.<\/em><\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading the “debate” between Young Turk Christopher Cantwell and older hand Jeffrey A. Tucker. I put debate in quotation marks because I’m not sure Tucker knows he’s being debated. <\/p>\n

Cantwell’s “5 Habits of Highly Effective Radicals”<\/a> …<\/p>\n

… angrily answers Tucker’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Libertarians.”<\/a><\/p>\n

For a couple of days, I’ve been thinking about making a response of my own, particularly to some of Cantwell’s points. There is so<\/i> much to say!<\/p>\n

But I’m not going to say it. <\/p>\n

I’ve written before about the qualities of free individuals<\/a> and creating sustainable freedom<\/a> in a four-parter that even now, nine years later, seems pretty good, pretty right, to me.<\/p>\n

So I’m with Tucker, who talks about sustainability, while I also admire Cantwell’s fire and intransigence. Philosophically, I don’t think the two are as far apart as Cantwell perceives himself as being from Tucker — though attitudinally Cantwell is way, way out there<\/a>. That is, out in the territory where he offends and perhaps scares<\/a> even fellow anarchists. <\/p>\n

If I were to sit down to a drink with one or the other of them, I’d choose Tucker. But I expect Cantwell’s the more entertaining YouTuber.<\/p>\n

But OMG, the anger. Cantwell is not only angry; he promotes rage as a vital tool in an activist’s arsenal. He’s not only uncompromising; he’s intolerant of making common cause with allies who may not be fully philosophically on board. He not only advocates being rigorously well-informed; but he wants us all to have answers for every argument.<\/p>\n

Just reading his words wears me out. While thinking about how to respond, I realized I already made my answer — nine years ago in those columns linked above. So no, I’m not going to essay an answer or answer him with an essay now. Commentariat, feel free to have at it.<\/p>\n

I’ll just note that such fury and fierce focus as Cantwell advocates isn’t sustainable. Being driven by rage is not living. Certainly it’s not living free<\/i>. Except for the rare individual who thrives on conflict (which Cantwell seems to be), that way lies burnout. <\/p>\n

And as the angry activist goes up in flames, a lot of potential friends get singed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: August 18, 2017. Christopher Cantwell — an angry supposed libertarian at the time I wrote this post — has since moved into the dark world of white supremacy and hatred of Jews. This is the second time I’ve known someone to do this. It’s incomprehensible to me how someone could rush (and in both cases they did rush) from individualist to the worst sort of collectivist. All I can say is that in both cases the a**holes in question were consumed with anger even before they made the change. When I write this post back in 2015, I found…<\/p>\n

Continue readingOh, the wearying rage<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-and-spirit","category-resistance","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32393,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20931\/revisions\/32393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}