Rogue | Frontier Philosophy@RoguesPhilo
Why the Online Right hates Hickman:
Hickman is a folk hero of the bygone, frontier American days when pioneers roamed the earth and braved wild unknowns.
American Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that “the universal disposition of Americans to emigrate to the western wilderness ... is the actual result of an expansive power which is inherent in them".
This inner "power" lays dormant within Europeans; it explains the motive of European global conquests. We simply "cannot stop". Our "Faustian spirit" dares us to forever more reach beyond us.
The American's inner power manifested into two distinct types — the pioneer (Hickman) and the industrialist (Anon Right).
The confrontation between these extreme, opposite types has shaped the soul of America, since our first footsteps on the continent.
The pioneer's "faustian spirit" is manifested through the integration and conquest of nature. He is not "LARPing". He is not "running away from Europe". He is not "denying the exceptionalism of Aryan civilization".
He is deeply engaged in an ascetic warrior experience where he overcomes the near-insurmountable challenge of survival. He represents an ideal heroic character, a force of pure self-sufficiency. He is a legendary being whose adventures echo forever throughout the halls of history.
Can Hickman be said to be the perfect embodiment of the "pioneer warrior"? No.
I consistently ridicule him for his refusal to ride a horse into own, or, at the least, get a cart and a mule, or, perhaps a burro! An American adventurer cannot be said to be exceptional without a noble steed — this surely we can all agree upon.
It is obvious that Hickman does authentically live some of our unique ritual rites of passage, especially for a Transcendentalist author like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, or Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wanders through the wild unknowns of rural America, has a deep contemplative connection with nature, and documents his experience, like each writer within the American literary tradition.
Perhaps if Hickman was some drug addled upstate New Yorker without ambition like so many are afflicted, we could ridicule him with greater ferocity. And yet, he is self-employed as a writer (something his online anime pfp critics likely dreams of), owns multiple properties, and has a family.
Critics may degrade him as a "hobo", and yet he has generated clear wealth from his pioneer travels. To view him as "impoverished" would be incorrect, as he has a clear opportunity to scaffold his internet fame into a book deal or two that could put him several brackets of riches beyond us all.
The online right hates Hickman, primarily, because he acts in real life with his face. He does not hide, nor protect his identity. He lives first and writes second. Regardless of your opinion of Hickman's morality, he himself is the embodiment of his ideals. As Marcus Aurelius wrote so eloquently: "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
In contrast, the Anon believes he embodies the great American industrialist who must "move to the city and retake positions of power". Anyone who denies this exact sentence is labeled a "LARPING grifter" and targeted for immediate destruction.
Frederick Jackson Turner wrote of how the industrialists would come after the pioneer to order his land and produce capital surplus.
"The men of capital and enterprise come. The settler is ready to sell out and take the advantage of the rise in property, push farther into the interior and become, himself, a man of capital and enterprise in turn.
The small village rises to a spacious town or city; substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens, colleges, and churches are seen. Broad-cloths, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are in vogue.
Thus wave after wave is rolling westward; the real Eldorado is still farther on."
The men of industry must overcome the primitivism of the environment and establish the foundation of civilization. Fundamentally, they are builders. Their herculean aim is to develop tall towers that touch the heavens and reach into the divine. They are magicians who take the raw materials of the Earth and order them in accordance with God's will to create beauty.
Frankly, the pioneer and the men of enterprise loathe one another. The industrialist is repulsed by the pioneer's savagery, his total refusal to "play by the rules" and continue to advance European civilization.
The pioneer is repulsed by the industrialist's incessant need to "box him in" with the orderliness of civilized life, the world of which he fundamentally rejects as decadent. Why restrict the freedom of the human spirit with all these laws and regulations, burden him down with material goods, and, god forbid, condemn him to such a peasant thing as a job? Disgusting.
These contrasting types appear yet again between the "return to the land" vs the "retake positions of power" online right factions. The answer to which type is superior is irrelevant. We can see the debate is the literal foundation of the American identity. it is meant to be revived until the end of the American Empire. Rather than fight, we must simply accept our roles and seek to allow each type to manifest its own, unique superiority.
However, I must assert that the Anon Right are not great industrialists, but rather frauds. They post an infinity of epithets all centered upon the notions of "Make America Great Again" and "America First".
Yet, when they see a brother move to a rural environment instead of saying the magical words "move to the city and retake positions of power", they cheer for his demise. Any setback Hickman faces from the harsh New York winters to the clothing choice of his wife are immediately ridiculed online, as if to say "Yea, that's what you get for being poor, loser." — there is no virtue in such actions.
Much like the Leftist, the Anon Right speaks all the ideals of their movement, and yet he absolutely refuses to see value in his own people. The Anon Right does not like Americans (unless it gets them ad revenue online). They like hiding online, posting pretty Pinterest pictures, and pretending they're winning, while they openly slander their countrymen for the audacity to act in real life.
The lesser decry the greater for the crime of being to justify their personal inability. The Anon refuses to Manifest Destiny in real life. The Anon turns his back on tradition and divorces himself from the potential to become heroic.
The Anon Right are shaped by daily trends; they have no basis in tradition, nor any responsibility to live with any real consequences of their beliefs. They can simply hide, delete their accounts, or make a new faceless name.
There is no commitment, not in the same light as Hickman who must first himself adventure before he writes. The Anon lives a passive existence, vicariously through others. If Hickman didn't exist, the Anon would have nothing to write about. His being is dictated by whatever trend generates him clicks, an identity formed by the herd alone.
The anon represents pure quantity a mass without unique character or value beyond the fleeting opinion of the day, whereas Hickman represents the quality of heroic pioneer who has consistently shaped the American identity.
