Ted Nugent, also commonly known as “The Nuge” or “Uncle Ted” is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist. His activism mainly stems from his conservative political views, his advocacy of no drug usage, and particularly his advocacy of hunting and gun ownership rights. He grew up in Michigan and spent his youth in the great outdoors, much of the time hunting with his dad, who was a World War 2 veteran and taught him about firearms very early and that ethos has been a strong part of his adolescent to adult life. He grew up in a right-leaning conservative upbringing and that has been his position ever since.
Although two-party politics is a divisive, old hat paradigm, not to mention a puppet show, I grew up in an opposite political upbringing to Ted Nugent. My parents are former hippies from the 60’s, did acid in Golden Gate Park, worked in Berkeley and I subsequently grew up in a left-leaning liberal household in the Bay Area of California. Suffice to say, Ted Nugent could be held up as an icon of everything in opposition to what I was raised with and is someone I used to despise. His loud mouth, “I’m positive I’m correct” and “lies bounce off me” attitude could be summarized in the W. B. Yeats quote “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Over the years, I’ve known who Nugent was and the ideas he has always been so passionate on speaking about. As we grow and learn, it’s important to depolarize from identity politics, which much like religions, seem to be things people buy wholesale and go down the line on, feeling the same way on every issue regarding. One of the key principles which are very important to avoid is becoming so divisive and polarizing on “the issues”. Whatever the issues may be. Labeling people with a polarized title is a way to put them into a box and control them. Is she liberal? Is she conservative? How do I classify this? Through spiritual growth, we can come to depolarize ourselves where if we came from one background we may transition into another way of being which is an inner alchemical transmutation to the point where we become a nearly different being later in life than where we started. Thus, landing at a point where we exhibit all the best traits of true liberalism and true conservatism, which are centerpoints of balance and solidity. Some of those who have a knowledge of natural law and the seven hermetic principles, may use them for good Jedi wizardry or else engage in dark sorcery, using them to their advantage over others. We have all heard the term divide and conquer but not many realize that a false paradigm of left vs right politics is simply a tool to polarize the masses into different political teams and thus fight amongst each other while the real magic acts are happening elsewhere at the top of the power pyramid.
We can also look to ancient wisdom and etymology of words and come to know that modern translations of terms are not nearly what they used to be. So you might say a modern day liberal is often not liberal in the true sense of the word and a modern day conservative is not conservative as well. Both sides of the fence have been diluted and co-opted within the mainstream false paradigm two party system. I have a colleague who’s quite conservative in the true sense of the word, but his spirit is sky high. Because of that, even though he despises socialism, gun control, and the Democratic party while I still to this day despise theocrats, Monsanto, and Republicans, both he and I have depolarized enough that we still agree on most things regarding life and society from a larger metaphysical perspective. Mainly that the sovereignty of the individual is king. He’s one who has risen above voting for the modern day Republican party because of their support for the deplorable behavior of the political leaders of Zionist Israel for example and because of their stances on not letting women make their own choices about their bodies in regards to abortion. While I have also come far enough to say the Democratic party is rubbish as well, is in no way going to be ameliorating the injustices of the middle class and has been an equally terrible of a warmongering party as the Republicans, which I have no interest in ever voting for again. Does that mean both parties are the same? No. Yet are either the solution? No. So good on him for having a mind of his own, being a traditional conservative who cares about conserving the environment and also recognizes that the current Republican party is garbage. And good on me for being a liberal in the true sense of the word, meaning free, and caring about strong individualism and the ability of each person to live their lives without force intervention of any kind. Government or corporate.
Ted Nugent however, is very much a supporter of the modern day Republican party. Which is a very polarized position he still holds. In my personal continued attempt to go further and rise above that, thus depolarize from a purely opposite liberal box of looking at the world, two areas I could be not identified with my upbringing on are immigration and guns. As I am not paint by numbers liberal on immigration, since people who immigrate from less desirable countries to more desirable countries bring their positives, but their negatives as well. Yet, at the same time, I know that if anyone else is suffering, I am suffering and we should have compassion for those who need help. Which is most effectively done by allowing them to help themselves in their own native lands and not robbing those lands of their natural resources through imperialism. Upon recently seeing Nugent on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, a venture which has still managed to retain some quality while being one of the most view podcasts on spaceship Earth, I would give Nugent the benefit of the doubt and listen to the conversation. And I must say that I agreed with about 80%+ of what this should be polar opposite figure to me had to say during the conversation. Perhaps due to my credit of continued attempts to zoom out and depolarize.
What is key in life is the creative and powerful individual and Nuget understands and highlights that through his passion. Most people who come to politics know that in modernity, there is an effort to reduce their rights and opportunities. Nugent holds rugged individualism and self-reliance up as being paramount, which is something that has come to be appreciated by this writer and I applaud him for always standing up for. I totally understand that gun ownership is in the constitution for a reason and that if an armed population has no guns then the militarized black iron prison of the machine of modern day Empire will certainly still have guns. It would be wonderful to live in a safe world where no one needed guns, as Bill Hicks said: “There’s no difference between having a gun and shooting someone, and not having a gun and not shooting someone.” But that’s not the world at this spacetime vector. So, until Empire goes, a responsible armed citizenry is a big nuisance and problem for the machine of control.
What’s rarely ever talked about but is very true and will get you a strike on YouTube for saying so is that some of the shootings in the United States are real, but the majority of them are staged psychological operations which instill a problem, reaction, solution dynamic of attempting to get the populous to self-remove their 2nd amendment rights which give them great power and great responsibility and treat them like adults. So believe it or not, I will support the pro-gun statement that we really don’t have a gun ownership problem in the United States, we have a mental health problem, which extends deep into the veins of our generally shallow and compassionless culture which throws so many under the bus who are left for years unloved or alone. So even though I called the NRA nuts because they seem to think the only solution to the problem is uzi’s for school kids, I’ll still meet Nugent a certain percentage of the way and find a balance point on any mentally healthy and responsible American having the right to own guns. But another question is, what type of gun? Because as Jim Jefferies said, “They’re not called protection rifles, they’re called assault rifles.” We also have yet to hear a rational and viable step by step solution from the right as to how to keep assault rifles out of the hands of the mentally ill. Since most right-wing policies only help corporations and billionaires, while throwing labor and the poor under the bus, many of the same folks that advocate for strong gun ownership have caused an amplification of mental illness through their other policies.
One of the most important tenets of the future is decentralization. Which is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and instead across the spectrum of everyone using the system? A co-op is a decentralized company which is owned by workers rather than the one CEO at the top who’s usually an asshole who is only nice to you as an employee because of your allegiance to the corporation he’s steering. Corruption is somewhat inevitable at our current not very good consciousness signal in the cell phone bar level of public awareness to the true nature of reality. So in a decentralized system, when corruption inevitably occurs, it hits smaller, more separate components of the system, rather than just infiltrating the one group at the top of the power pyramid. Nuge is a strong advocate of individualism which from a systems standpoint, is more decentralized over collectivism. Even though one could think of individualism as “I only care about myself” but it ultimately stems from each individual’s separate and unique journey in life, which when allowed to truly flourish creativity and spiritually, turns nodes on the network into much more powerful and unique sovereign entities. Nuge is a strong advocate of not relying on for government “handouts”, which is good if it’s about people being self-reliant and making situations work for them but bad if it becomes a politically expedient euphemism for eroding basic social services such as healthcare being a right and not a privilege. It doesn’t mean that we cant have a base standard of care and compassion for those who fall through the mental illness cracks but to sacrifice good individual expression for a group is worse than fixing bad individual expression based on the group.
The strongest advocate within him is that of a hunter. There is a massive difference between sports trophy hunting and hunting for sustenance. Sustenance hunting, which mankind has done since the dawn of time, especially prior to the invention of agriculture, is a birthright. If done with respect for the animal, sustainable harvesting is a spiritual quest or initiation, not to mention a profound life skill for the adult male to know and lesson learning for young males to experience. Knowing where your food comes from is key, and to Nugent’s credit, he does highlight unless you’re a vegan, you have no right to argue about killing animals and that vegetarian farming harms animals as well. Sometimes even more because of agricultural practices such as soybean oil, which is responsible for incredibly large amounts of forestation. I do believe and buy that as a lifelong meat eater, he has killed the vast majority of that food himself so he’s eating natural, grass fed, omega-3 healthy meat and looks very good for his age. If the type of animal being hunted is not sustainable, then that is a sad reflection on humanity and is called trophy hunting. It speaks to a macho juvenile male who instinctively wants to go out there and kill things to establish dominace and collect trophies for purely materialistic gain. As mankind has also hunted many species to extinction and we still very, unfortunately, see game hunters photographing themselves with endangered species to this day.
Like with all polarized right-leaning arguments I’ve heard through my lifetime, it’s not so much what is being said. It’s what’s not being said. Right wing polarized people tend to shit can government, while thinking corporations are the greatest things in the universe which can do no wrong and are engines of job creation. In reality, the government is a giant corporation, the united states has been turned into a corporation, even our names have been turned into corporations. The world has been corporatized and there is a massive difference between mega-giant corporations and small businesses. Better to be pro-small business, and anti corporate power. Since the problem with the government is that it is corporatized, only acting as a placater to corporate power. This is what lobbying (which really just means corruption) and money in politics is about, placating to aristocratic bloodlines and massive mega-corporations who have more money than many countries and have zero legion to any country. But love their socialism as they are super happy to privatize gains and socialize losses at the expense of the taxpayer. These are side effects of continuing hard right or soft right policies which Nugent supports. Not to mention the continuing dissolving of labor and theocratic leanings on women’s reproductive birthright decisions. Much of this corporatization had been kicked into overdrive in the united states by 40+ years of Reaganomics, which made an already unstable mis-distribution of wealth even worse. So when Nugent looks at the decline of America and blames it on hippies and beatniks, while giving un-checked corporate power a complete pass, it speaks to the long way he still has to come in his wisdom.
So I agreed with the majority of what he said during the interview. Will I ever vote for the Republican party? Fuck no I’d rather drink my own diarrhea. Do I disrespect Ted Nugent? No, I do respect him and his opinions, and his passion and spirit. Which is something I would have never said just 10 short years ago. Would I respect him even more if he became an independent? Absolutely. I give him credit for what he is good at and what he still doesn’t fully know due to a lacking of experience. The fact that he’s never had a psychedelic experience says also says a lot, as he’s still in the sandbox of consciousness. Life is about evolution, change, and growth. In that order. The evolution is not a physical one, but a mental one. Via stair steps and level up’s of consciousness through expansion. Completely decoupling from old paradigm human operating systems, and seeing things in an all-new way. So his drug-free stance has also meant a truly medicine free stance. Since he’s never had a shamanic experience, realizing that wolf he’s about to shoot through the eyes is actually his spirit animal who can give him wisdom beyond his wildest imagination. So there still needs to be a great change in him from where he started. I have changed, how has he?