From his home in Houston, Rep. Dan Crenshaw talked to the Washington Examiner about his book Fortitude and the lessons he hopes people glean from each chapter.
Crenshaw is a freshman congressman and decorated Navy SEAL who was wounded in his third military deployment in Afghanistan in an IED explosion that cost him his right eye and nearly the vision in his left.
The book is a call to arms battling a culture, Crenshaw writes, that has grown out of control at the expense of decency and has abandoned traditional heroes in favor of glorifying loudmouthed commentary and insulting spitfire politics.
Crenshaw, who has taken up oil painting during the coronavirus, was first elected to Congress in 2018 in Texas’s 2nd district. He shot to fame, though, days before he even won his race, when comedian Pete Davidson mocked his appearance in a Saturday Night Live skit.
“This guy is kinda cool, Dan Crenshaw,” Davidson said on the show, next to a photo of him. “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas and not a hit man in a porno movie. “I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war, or whatever,” he added. “Whatever.”
Crenshaw responded hours later in a Tweet, saying simply, “Good rule in life: I try hard not to offend; I try harder not to be offended. That being said, I hope @nbcsnl recognizes that vets don’t deserve to see their wounds used as punchlines for bad jokes.”
His measured response on social media and his subsequent appearance on SNL set the stage for his rise to prominence in American politics as a man of both reason and willingness to go to the mattresses without disparaging anyone’s character.
From losing his mother to cancer when he was a young boy to his decision to run for Congress, Crenshaw describes his book as both the lessons that shaped him and a blueprint to a life fulfilled outside the outrage culture.
