Ted Nugent and I have never met. If you went, line by line, down a list of prominent political issues then I think that he and I would disagree on a lot more than we would agree on. He and I both write and talk about hunting from very different angles. But I don't want to define myself that way and I don't want to define my relationships with other people that way.
Politics is not who we are. Here in the US I think that we get too caught up in our differences to recognize how very much we have in common even with those from what seems like the opposite end of the political spectrum. We're all still Americans.
Ted Nugent is not running for public office. He is not in a position of power. Nor do I believe that he substantially influences the opinions of very many people who don't already agree with him. He's this guy who plays guitar really well and he had some hits in the 70's and 80's and he said some stuff about guns and hunting some years ago and then the media suddenly wanted to put a mic in front of him constantly.
How well would most of you fare if someone put a microphone in front of you each and every day and asked you for your opinion on everything under the sun no matter what mood you were in? How long would it be until you said something stupid that made everyone hate you?
Most of us would look pretty bad, sooner or later. After years and years of being asked to opine on everything imaginable, Nugent said a bunch of dumb stuff about a bunch of people over the last month or two. Ok, well I personally would probably have bombed a lot sooner than that.
He's a human being. If we could divine each and every thing that any random person thinks or says all day long, all year long, we could find a reason to hate everyone if that was what we were after. But I think its better not to judge people at their worst. Lets stop looking for reasons to hate people. We should start looking for reasons to forgive people.
We don't need to agree with everything that someone thinks to be ok with them. I bet that if Ted Nugent and I went hunting or fishing together then we would get along just fine. It doesn't matter that we disagree on climate change and Barack Obama and a million other things. The world is bigger than that. You and I don't need to feel threatened by the things that we disagree with Ted Nugent about. The man volunteers to help kids with cancer and he loves his family and he likes dogs and he isn't an immediate threat to any of us. He isn't running for public office.
Yes, I disagree with the stupid things that Ted Nugent has said lately. But I also disagree with the idea that I'm supposed to hate him for it. He's a regular guy who has been put in an extraordinary situation.
Forgive.
[Photograph copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers. Pic related. Judge others as though you were sitting around a campfire with them at the end of a long day together.]
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