Ismism (p122 - p123)

(Setting:  The Head Honcho enlists the Safari Golfer to be his celebrity spokesperson.  Now they need to select an "ism" to define the philosophy they are going to foist on the public.)

Once the Golfer was contracted as the Senator's celebrity spokesperson, a defining "ism" was needed as a name for the Golfer's mystical, unknowable, and therefore religious movement that the Honcho was adopting. For this critical task, Freeman sought the assistance of the Federal Ismological Czar to wade through the existing isms to find one that fit the Golfer's secular religion. This would be much easier than developing a completely new ism, because it takes the Food, Drug, and Ism Administration ten years to approve one.

So, Freeman and the Ismological Czar sorted through the existing isms. Communism, Marxism, and Socialism belonged to the enemy, so they were rejected. Capitalism wouldn’t do, since the Honcho was it's bureaucratic anti-Christ. Anarchism would only make the Honcho nervous. Monarchism would evoke pathetic images of sappy British royalty. Existentialism had no future. Even the more esoteric isms were found wanting. Speciesism, scientism, sexism, androcentrism, chauvinism, phallicism, elitism, fascism, colonialism, Zionism, militarism, totalitarianism, cynicism, stoicism, Catholicism, monogamism, ageism, rightism, and even rapism didn't seem to fit.

They evaluated the entire six-volume catalog of the world's existing isms, yet didn’t find an appropriate one. Thus, they had to invent a new ism, which would be subject to FDIA review to ensure it was safe for public consumption. This would involve many years of laboratory analysis and carefully controlled exposure of the experimental ism to test mammals.

Since there was no time for such a lengthy approval process, the Ismological Czar mentioned a loophole in the FDIA’s rules. Generic substitutes for already approved commercial drugs require no testing by the FDIA, so why not develop a generic ism? Freeman seized this opportunity and invented "Ismism", which was the most generic ism he could think of. The Ismological Czar formally registered Ismism with the FDIA.

Initially, the Honcho disapproved of Ismism, because it was generic and therefore described nothing specific and could mean anything to anybody. Freeman argued that it was a philosophy that simply left its options open. If the masses rallied behind Ismism, it didn't matter what it stood for, or that it actually stood for nothing at all. After all, most adherents of other isms have long since forgotten the substantive tenets that originally inspired their worship. They worship their particular ism because it’s their particular ism. Most likely, it was handed down from parent to child, and is simply a conditioned family tradition.

Freeman also argued that Ismism doesn’t require any laborious memorization of dogma or commandments. It simply requires devotion to whatever the leader of Ismism declares important. Being completely unstructured, Ismism also avoids a clash between its tenets and the facts, since it has no tenets, which matched the Golfer's philosophy exactly. More precisely, it matched the philosophy that he had never really professed, since audiences kept cheering whenever he tried to speak.