A Savage Life

by Michael Savage

  But, we were proud to be Americans that day. We all came together. We were prouder the day after we were hit than we are today.

  Forty-Four

  Talking to a Bum About God

  I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY HOUSES OF WORSHIP I’VE TRIED IN my life that I’ve walked out of. I walked out of them sometimes because I was bored, sometimes because I thought their politics were too far to the Left. I’ve walked out of many houses of worship. In fact, I never found one that I liked. And yet, I’m a man who believes in God. Why? Who am I not to believe in God? Who am I to say, “I don’t believe in God”? What do you think I am: bigger than God? “Do you think I created myself?” a man once said to me. “Follow your logic in your own head,” a homeless man said to me.

  I was once into, more so than now, talking to strangers. I was the wandering man who would talk to weird people, figuring they held the truth, or some truth. Now I hold my own truths. I don’t need to talk to strangers to form my opinions. I can come up with my own, but when I was younger, I talked to a lot of odd people. One of them was an itinerant man. You’d call him a bum, but he wasn’t really because he wasn’t really dirty. He wasn’t disheveled; he didn’t look like a homeless man, but he was. He had a backpack and long white hair. He wasn’t particularly clean and he wasn’t particularly dirty, and he wasn’t an alcoholic or a druggie. So, I talked to him about this and that.

  His name was Morris (or Moses). So, I said to him, “Do you believe in God?” I remember to this day—it was on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. I looked at him and he had startling blue eyes. He looked at me and said, as though in astonishment, “Why? Who created you?” In that instant, I had a satori, like the Japanese talk about. I understood more completely than I ever had through any preacher or rabbi what it was all about.

  Follow it back: “Do you believe in God?” I say to the itinerant man.

  He says, stunned, “Why? Who created you?”

  I got it in that flash—you know, that flash of understanding; the satori?

  Follow it back. So you’re an atheist and you say, “Well, how do you know there’s a God?” So what is there, nothing? So nothing created you? So you believe in nothing? Therefore, you believe in something—but that’s nothing. You believe in nothingness.

  I believe in God. That’s all. How can you believe in nothingness? How is it possible to believe in nothingness? How can something come from nothing? It’s a violation of all the laws of physics! Something cannot come from nothing. It violates physical science, biological science, theological science. It violates all the laws of reason! It violates all the laws of nonreason. So, what I’m getting at is what I learned from that man.

  So then I said, “Can I drop you off where you’re going?” I drove him to a freeway overpass that no longer exists. The man got out and said good-bye. He disappeared, and I never saw him again. Who was he? A prophet? Was he a reincarnation of a religious figure? I don’t know what he was. Maybe he was just a smart guy who was a bum. A lot of bums are smart, and a lot of corporate guys are not that smart. They play people for fools. They think that everybody is a fool because they control the money.

  What they don’t understand is that there are values beyond money. They’ve never learned that. Unfortunately, our government is exactly the same. It’s MBA all the way, right up into the military hierarchy. They think that an MBA makes them a war hero or a sage, but many would take a pound of flesh or sell their country out for less than thirty pieces of silver. They would teach their children Chinese and move to Shanghai if they had a better offer!

  Forty-Five

  Conversations with My Great Grandfather

  JUST THE OTHER DAY, I GOT A PICTURE OF A DAGUERREOTYPE of my great grandfather from Russia. It turns out there’s a distant relative somewhere in America who’s doing the genealogy of the family. I never met my great grandfather. I knew he had to exist. I wouldn’t be here without him, God bless him. His name was Laveuc Itzak Vayner, born 1866. In this picture, I see a man in a rabbi’s outfit with a suit and tie staring at me. It looks like he has a red beard.

  I got the picture of my great grandfather and I started to have conversations with him in my head because there are cultures on earth that believe that their ancestors are with them at all times watching them, watching their every act, and it’s what keeps the believers in check. Those of us who carry around our ancestors in our heads are those who keep the human race sane and alive.

  As you know, I spent many years collecting medicinal plants on very rare islands of the South Pacific, and I’m talking a long time ago before tourism overtook these areas. And I used to collect primitive art. You can’t find primitive art anymore. It’s all in museums. And most of these ancestral pieces of art—for example, from New Guinea or New Britain or New Ireland—at that time, contained figures that codified the ancestry of that person. The artist would carve something out of the tree trunk and there would be ancestral faces and bodies in it because they understood quite well that none of us were born unto ourselves. We were all born of a mother who was born of a mother who was born of a mother who was born of a mother who was born of a mother, ad infinitum. So if you forget that chain, that you’re part of this human chain of evolution within your own family, what you become is a narcissist without past or future, and, frankly, an empty present.

  Something happened in me when I looked at the picture of the great grandfather who I never met. He’s staring right at me through this daguerreotype taken around 1860 or 1870. Somewhere in Russia or Poland—somewhere where almost every Jewish person who was left behind was annihilated and killed either by the Nazis or by the Russians.

  Since I got this picture, I’ve been having imaginary conversations with my great grandfather and it has altered my behavior in some ways because I realize I’m not here alone. I didn’t come out of the air. I wasn’t born through spontaneous combustion. Even as a little boy, I must say, when I was doing naughty stuff, I would apologize to my ancestors. And I would look up and I would think they were there. I would do the naughty stuff anyway because I had no impulse control as a little boy. And I felt they looked away in shame. But more recently, I started to talk to my great grandfather.

  So here he is and he looked at me and I looked at him and I imagined the following:

  He spoke to me in Hebrew and he said, “Her zuch hein, Michael”—“Listen, Michael.” Then he said, “Vus machs du, Michael,”—“What do you do? What are you doing?”

  So I said, “I’m a writer and I’m on the radio.”

  “What’s the radio?”

  “I talk to a lot of people on the radio.”

  “What do you say to the people on the radio?”

  “I talk about politics and events.”

  “And what do you say about politics and events?”

  “Whatever’s going on, I give them my opinion.”

  “And why is your opinion so important?”

  “I don’t know. People seem to like the way I think about these things.”

  “Well, what do you think about these things?”

  “Well, Grandfather, it depends upon the situation. For example, if there’s a war, maybe I’m against the war.”

  “And they think what you think is important?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they think I have intelligence and I have an education.”

  “And they don’t?” he says.

  I say, “No, most people don’t have much intelligence, Grandfather, not in the world in which we live. And many people don’t have higher educations and they don’t know how to think.”

  “And how do you know how to think?”

  “Well, Grandfather, you may not know this but I have a lot of years learning how to think, going all the way back to college. I have many higher degrees where I was taught how to think.”

  “What do you mean you were taught how to think? You couldn’t think when you were a little boy?”

  “No, not l
ike I do now. Your grandson, my father, Ben, also taught me how to think.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “He taught me how to put two and two together.”

  “What do you mean two and two together? What’s two and two?”

  “I learned how to add two and two is four, not six.”

  “What do you mean, you know how to put things together for people because they can’t on their own?”

  “Yes.”

  “So in that sense, you’re like a rabbi, like a leader, like a teacher who tries to explain things to people?”

  “Uh, I guess so.”

  So Grandfather said, “Okay, that I can understand. So if you can do that like a rabbi, why aren’t you a rabbi?”

  “Because I’m not. I don’t want to do it through a holy book.”

  “Why? It worked for me and everyone preceding me for a thousand years or more. Five thousand years we used the holy book. You can’t use the holy book? You’re too good for it?”

  “I don’t know, it just seems remote to me, Grandfather. It just seems like these prayers about a being in the sky.”

  “Why, you don’t think He exists? Are you sure of that? Are you sure that your every breath is not because of Him? You’re sure that every morsel of bread that you eat every day is not because of Him, every glass of wine that you take is not because of Him?”

  I said, “Well, of course I understand the prayer, which is ‘God, thank you for giving us the grape and the wine,’ and ‘thank you for giving me this bread.’ I understand all of that, and sometimes I forget it.”

  “Well, don’t forget it,” he said to me.

  “Why shouldn’t I forget it?”

  “Because if you forget it, He will forget you. And if He forgets you, you’re liable to wind up with nothing.”

  “You mean, like the Bible says, it will all dry up?”

  “It could dry up. Maybe you have everything right now because you do remember Him. Maybe you have everything right now because you still think about him every second.”

  “Who’s Him?”

  “Come on. Stop giving me the B.S., Michael. You know what I’m saying. Don’t be a wise guy now, you’re too old for it,” he says to me.

  I said, “Okay, so Grandfather, let’s go further.”

  “Further? Where do you want to go?”

  “As far as you’re going to go.”

  “You were led back to where you started, which is with God.”

  “And what should I do now?”

  “Do what you’re doing. But you’re not happy anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t talk to God directly. You make believe you do, but you don’t. You really want to, but you don’t know how to.”

  “Why don’t I know how to?”

  “Because you’re not leading a clean life.”

  “Why am I not leading a clean life?”

  “Because you’re living in a place and a time and a world where there’s very little cleanliness. Everything is distorted. Everything is dirty from the point of view of your people. Your people were so pure, your people were so clean that they died for it. Do you know what that means, Michael?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Well, no, you shouldn’t know. But they died holding the Torah. They’d rather die than not believe in God. And you make believe it’s not a big deal. You make believe you could or you could not. When it’s convenient for you, you do. You write a book on it because you think you can sell a book?”

  “Grandfather, don’t be cynical.”

  “I’m not being cynical. I’m just telling you. Do you really believe what you write or you write it just to make a living?”

  “I write it so that people respect me.”

  “Oh, so you do it for your ego?”

  “Well, the Christians say, ‘All is vanity.’”

  “All right, so the Christians are right. All is vanity. So you’re a vain man.”

  “Yes, I’m a vain man.”

  “You’re only a vain man?”

  “I don’t know. Let God judge whether I’m only a vain man.”

  “Are you doing more harm than good or more good than harm?”

  “God’ll have to judge.”

  “Oh, the God that you’re not sure exists? The God that you mock? The God that you play with?”

  “Look, Grandfather, you’re putting me in a hard place.”

  “Yeah, that’s where I want you to be. You don’t have that much time on earth to play around with these things and these ideas. Either you’re all in or don’t be in at all. Move to LA, act like one of the other seventy-five-year-old, eighty-year-old schmucks, get yourself a twenty-five-year-old girlfriend and, you know, drive around like you’re twenty-five years old. Take Viagra every day and think that you’re twenty-five years old, which you’re not. Live in that dream world, because that too will come to an end.”

  “So what do you want me to do, Grandfather?”

  “Do what you’re doing but do it a little more seriously. Understand that you were put here for a reason and in some regard, you have fulfilled your purpose. In other regards, you’re taking it in a little too cavalier a manner. See, I know some words. We knew them in Russian and Hebrew too. We know what cavalier means. You don’t really take yourself seriously enough, Michael. I’m trying to tell you that you’re way past what even you think you are. You’re much more important than you think you are and the reason you don’t know who you are is because you don’t want to know who you are. And the reason you don’t want to know who you are is because you’re afraid to know who you are.”

  “Why am I afraid to know who I am?”

  “Why? Because you’ll have to change your life and you’ll have to do things that you don’t want to do.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Lead people for the good of God, for the good of the world.”

  “I think I have to stop here, Grandfather.”

  “Why? You’re afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid. I’m just not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, you want to know what I’m talking about? I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. You have to lead people in a more divine manner. You have to lead them in a more holy manner. You have to understand that this is not an accident what you have, having helped elect a president and having conversations with the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Every word that you say has a power. Each word is an atomic bomb. Do you understand what you release when you talk on the radio or you write a book? Or do you think it’s a joke?”

  “I think I have to take a break and have a drink now.”

  “Why? You don’t have the strength to go on?”

  “I’m not sure if I do. And I don’t know if the recording is still recording.”

  “Oh, that’s a good excuse. So why don’t you take a break and see if it’s still recording because I can keep talking since I’m dead. I’m in the next world. I have nothing to do. See, I’m in eternity. I could talk forever. But you, apparently, you already ran out of steam.”

  I looked at him and I said, “Okay, Grandfather, what would you have me talk about today to millions of people?”

  So far, I haven’t received an answer, so I’m going to turn to you with a question. What would my great grandfather want me to talk about today to millions of people? I could tell you that I don’t know. What would you have me talk about when you think about all the subjects under the sun? All the subjects under the sun and we’re going to talk about four subjects? Mueller and Comey now? Or someone on Fox News?

  Do you have conversations with deceased ancestors or would you think you’re crazy if you did? Would you call a psychiatrist if you thought you were talking to a deceased ancestor who talked to you with wisdom? Well, you’d probably call a doctor who’s a bigger nut than you are to put you on medication and tell you, “Don’t even have those conversations because you don’t know where it might lead.”<
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  I don’t care what your race is or your ethnicity or your background, I’m sure there are people who can relate to what I am saying. And if not, well, you’re out of luck because this is what I’m going to talk about. I could talk about immigration until I’m blue in the face. You know why? Because I’m an immigrant’s son. And in fact, I have the manifest of passengers from the ship that they took coming over to America, landing here in 1920. My grandmother came with five or six children. Their names are on the List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States. Can you believe this?

  You know how powerful this is to be an immigrant’s son in a time where immigration is such a hot topic? It gives me a very special view of the subject on both sides of that particular straddle.

  And so there are the names. Grandpa came first. He worked for seven years and sent money home to bring over the others; he got them out just before everyone was killed in the village and the country who was not of a certain race or religion. And you think about this, fate and what fate is. They were so poor, as the story came down to me, that they lived in a little village where there was no heat except, of course, from fire. There was a large clay oven in the middle of this room and the older ones would sleep on top of the clay oven to keep from freezing to death. The younger ones would huddle together. And that’s why we’re strong people. That’s why I haven’t caved despite the pressure of my life. And every time I start to whine to myself about how tough things are, I remember them. And by remembering them, I realize how easy I have it and how soft our lives are. And I ask myself and I ask my great grandfather, “Once again I ask you, what would you, Great Grandfather, want for me to talk about today to millions of people? What is worthy of my time on these airways? What would my great grandfather who I never met want for me to talk about to millions of people?”