reality-based educator

Nugent is an A list schmucko and chickenhawk. He wants to be governor of Michigan. The Independent has the story:

Ted is 6ft 3in; to get a sense of his general demeanour you could do worse than imagine the body of John Wayne possessed by the spirit of Ian Paisley in one of his less conciliatory moods. He launches into a fevered monologue about how much safer Britain would be with more guns on its streets.

"Never has there been such an upsurge in crime since they confiscated all your weapons. Why don't you arm yourselves? You Limeys have a zipper that's locked in the closed position, because you don't have a constitution. You're rewarded for shutting the fuck up."

He explains his political philosophy which, as I understand it, is based on extending the death penalty to a far wider range of crimes than homicide, then arming any survivors to the teeth. He owns around 350 guns himself - more than one for every household in Crawford.

British police who don't want to carry firearms are, Nugent says, "out of their minds. I say if somebody robs you, shoot 'em. I'd like all thieves killed. And all rapists. And carjackers. No more graffiti. No more..." - this next phrase is a Spoonerism, rather than some Texan term for gross indecency - "snatch-pursing."

"For an unarmed force," I suggest, "the British police have shot quite a few people. Did you hear about Jean Charles de Menezes?"

"That was horrible. An American cop would have just beat the shit out of him."

Nugent has had a Sheriff Deputy's badge since 1982, and recently assisted with federal raids, "kicking down doors and arresting people". A keen admirer of fellow-guitarist Tony Blair, he abhors drugs, including alcohol, and maintains that he has never used such substances. He considers homosexuality morally wrong. He speaks about Muslims in a way which, were he to repeat it on globally networked television, might endanger his life. Nugent is aiming to run as Governor of Michigan in 2010.

"If Yusuf Islam is a threat to world peace," I tell him, in response to his anti-Islamic rant, "I'll run your campaign myself, wearing cactus shorts."

"Only the guilty need feel guilty," he replies. "These jihadists want to kill us and Cat Stevens. The message to send to a coyote is: the next time I see you, I'll shoot you."

He went to Fallujah in May 2004, as part of a tour with the USO (the same organisation that sent Bob Hope to entertain on the front line).

"And I visited Saddam Hussein's master war room. It was a glorious moment. It looked like something out of Star Wars. I saw his gold toilet. I shit in his bidet."

In Iraq, he says, he was allowed the opportunity to man automatic weapons. "Our failure," he tells me, "has been not to Nagasaki them."

"Is that opinion shared by your friends in the Republican Party?"

"Most of them feel that way."

"At what level?"

"I've heard it from high-level senators and congressmen."

"How high?"

"The highest."

"Do you mean Rumsfeld, Cheney, or Bush?"

"No," he says, with a defiant look.

...

He has the rage, but he doesn't have the war record. At 18, he was called up to serve in Vietnam. "In 1977 you gave an interview to High Times [the cannabis user's journal of record] where you claimed you defecated in your clothes to avoid the draft."

("I got 30 days' notice of the physical," Nugent told them. "I ceased cleansing my body. Two weeks before the test I stopped eating food with nutritional value. A week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. My pants got crusted up.")

"I never shit my pants to get out of the draft," says Nugent, good-naturedly.

"You also told them you took crystal meth [methamphetamine, the highly destabilising drug sometimes described as poor man's crack] before the medical - as a result of which, and I quote: 'I got this big juicy 4F.'"

"Unbelievable. Meth," he replies, in a tone of deep sarcasm. "Yes, that's my drug of choice. You've got to realise that these interviewers would arrive with glazed eyes and I would make stories up. I never did crystal meth. And I never pooped my pants."

"But you did dodge the draft." "I had a 1Y [student deferment]. I enrolled at Oakland Community College."

"You said then that you wanted 'to teach the stupid bastards in the military a lesson'. I'd have thought you'd have loved the army. Guns. Travel. Danger." "Back then, I didn't even understand what World War II was."

"So basically," - I admit that I have, unaccountably, started to speak Nugent - "you didn't want to get your Michigan ass blown off in Vietnam." "Correct. I did not want to get my ass blown off in Vietnam."

"I know you do a lot of charity work for wounded veterans. Has it occurred to you that someone else may have died in Saigon because you didn't go?"

"Absolutely."

Nugent's name, as I am sure he's aware, appears, along with those of Cheney, Bush and many of their fellow Republicans, on a website called chickenhawks.com. It lists those who have evaded or abbreviated their own military service then, later in life, developed an appetite for war and machismo, either personally or by proxy.

"So has this made you..." "Certainly. Because I failed to serve in Vietnam, I feel an obligation now, to do everything I can to support those defending our freedom. Do I feel guilt and embarrassment? Yes."

"You missed your calling."

"I wish I'd understood how important America's fight against our enemies was. But did I go to Fallujah two years ago? Damn right I did. And was I in Afghanistan, manning a 50-calibre machine gun in a Chinook - ready to rock? Yes. Was I there for years? No. A couple of weeks. But I am not a coward."

I'm not even going to comment here. I think Nugent's words and record speaks for itself. The scary thing is, on the war he's just like thousands of other chickenhawk GOPers who support the war as long as they don't have to fight it.