The Scapegoating of Michael Savage

Radio host Michael Savage was my first conservative friend -- although I've never met the man.

When I woke up from liberalism two and a half years ago, I had nowhere to turn. My friends thought I had lost my marbles.

Having vaguely heard something about talk radio, I scanned my AM dial. I happened upon a cantankerous man with a Bronx accent bellowing that liberalism is a mental disorder. To my relief, I had found my first living, breathing conservative.

Everything that came out of Savage's mouth offended me. He blared on about feminized men; borders, language and culture; and other alien concepts.

One minute, Savage would scat in exquisite word jazz; then he'd offer a recipe for his favorite spaghetti sauce. And when the topic turned to liberals, he'd erupt like Mt. Vesuvius.

To my tender, politically correct ears, Savage seemed like a mad man. But in time, I realized that he was crazy like a fox.

At first, I agreed with nothing Savage said -- except about Obama. There, he was spot on.

Savage was one of the first to peg Obama as a socialist. He dubbed Obama "The Little Professor," à la Pol Pot. Savage predicted, quite presciently, that Obama, like his Cambodian brethren, would turn on his own people.

After listening daily for a few months, something shocking happened. Savage started to make sense. I am reminded of that Mark Twain quip about his dad.

Twain wrote that when he was a teenager, his father didn't know what he was talking about. When Twain became a young adult, suddenly his old man made sense. Twain quipped that he couldn't believe how much his dad had learned in a few short years. Like Twain, I was finally growing up.

Savage taught me about the perils of communism. He also opened my eyes to the gifts of the United States. All this was new and different. Living in the left-wing Berkeley bubble for almost three decades, I breathed in Marxism as seamlessly as air.

I have an image of myself, frozen in time. I'm standing in my office a couple of years ago, stopped dead in my tracks, as Savage described the atrocities of the old Soviet Union. Quite honestly, I had no idea. Deprogramming from my leftist coma had begun.

So it was extremely alarming to hear last year that Savage was being targeted for a public shunning by the British. The Home Secretary at the time, Jacqui Smith, had placed Savage on a no-fly list along with hardcore criminals.

Kowtowing to political correctness, the Brits were using Savage as their sacrificial lamb, apparently to placate the Muslims. And the new British Conservative government plans to continue his scapegoating.

Savage has concluded that the Brits were not the masterminds. His show wasn't even carried by British radio. The plot to make him persona non grata clearly began closer to home.

If you've ever been scapegoated at work or at home, you know what it's like; it's psychologically eviscerating. Scapegoating is designed to wipe out another person's humanity.

It also sends out a stern warning to others. Should they not toe the party line, they'll be cast out as surely as were those sacrificial goats in Biblical times.

Scapegoating is so malevolent that M. Scott Peck made it the very definition of evil in his seminal book, People of the Lie. The evil person transfers his own sins onto another in order to maintain moral purity. "We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves," says Peck.

Along with Savage, there have been many others subjected to the Left's witch hunts. Sweet little Carrie Prejean was robbed of her Miss California crown and publicly humiliated for supporting traditional marriage. Sarah Palin has been the object of endless taunts and vilification.

Average Americans attending tea parties are cavalierly smeared as "racists" and "Nazis." And it's not just the minions who are doing the tarnishing.

The Powers that Be are inciting the masses through their own hate speech. When the leaders use the full weight of the government to crack down on dissidents, we're no longer in the United States of old; we've been catapulted into a netherworld, presided over by men and women who long ago lost their souls.

Prophetically, Michael Savage knew this would happen. That's why he has raised his voice from the moment Obama entered the scene, imploring people to heed his warnings. His steady drumbeat has been, "You have no idea of the danger that you're in."

The scapegoating of Michael Savage should serve as a cautionary tale to liberals. It should be the proverbial slap in the face to those still punch-drunk on all that hope and change.

Today, it's conservatives. But tomorrow, it will be liberals. For instance, those lefties at Whole Foods discovered, to their utter shock, what it's like to incur the Left's wrath.

This is because the progressives are a bloodthirsty bunch with an insatiable appetite for power, just like their forefather, Pol Pot. Given enough time and opportunity, the Left has no qualms about eating its own.

A frequent contributor to American Thinker, Robin is a licensed psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley. You can e-mail her at robinofberkeley@hotmail.com,

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