Howard Siegel

The First Thing We Do Is Kill All The Isms Howard Siegel

The most prolific killer of innocents in all of human history is not disease or natural disaster. It is a diseased way of thinking that the author calls Ismitis. Communism, conservatism, Catholicism, pacifism, Nazism, patriotism, socialism, creationism, laissez faire capitalism - all have one thing in common. They are closed systems of thinking that provide deceptively easy, all-encompassing, pre-packaged answers to questions that are often objectively unanswerable. They suggest, insist, and sometimes demand, that all of us see and organize our world along party lines. They promise paradise, nirvana, eternal harmony, enlightenment, and happiness to the faithful, and use denigration, vilification, death and the threat of eternal damnation to their doubters. Throughout history they have set up ism businesses that sell nothing more than false hope and dangerously easy answers. They accumulate vast fortunes and enormous power selling oversimplification and bad ideas to the masses who are afraid of the unknown and refuse to think for themselves. Kill All the Isms is a Jonathan Swift meets George Carlin approach to the intrinsic absurdity of ideologies - secular and religious - and the venality, megalomania and utter shamelessness of their salesmen. Glenn Beck, Jessie Jackson, Jr., Michelle Bachmann, John Wayne, Governor Rick Perry, Pope Benedict XVI, Yahweh of the Old Testament, and Donald Trump are among the cast of ism characters that you will meet, laugh at, and watch fall from false grace along the way. Agree or disagree, you will understand why the author argues that the only good ism is a dead ism.