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Dead Humanist Society
Two Late, Great American Writers Critique Current Times

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), born in 1835 in Missouri, emerged from humble roots to become America’s literary conscience, wielding satire to expose societal flaws. Raised in a conservative Christian environment, Twain’s views evolved from conventional faith to a blend of Deism, spiritualism, and humanism, skeptical of organized religion’s hypocrisy. His seminal work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, used Huck’s moral journey to satirize slavery’s inhumanity and the South’s moral contradictions. In The Gilded Age, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner, he mocked post-Civil War corruption, with characters like Senator Abner Dilworthy embodying self-serving political hypocrisy.
Twain was a fierce critic of American imperialism, particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League (1898–1910), he opposed the US annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. In his essay To the Person Sitting in Darkness (1901), he satirized imperialist hypocrisy, writing, “We have crushed a deluded and trusting people; we attacked the weak and friendless who trusted us…we corrupted American honor and sullied its face before the world, but every detail was aimed at the good.” He condemned the moral betrayal of American democratic ideals, criticizing the US for subjugating nations under the guise of civilization. His King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905) further attacked colonial brutality, indirectly implicating US complicity in global imperialism.
On police brutality and domestic oppression, Twain’s essay The United States of Lyncherdom (1901, published posthumously in 1923) condemned mob violence and complicit law enforcement in lynchings of Black Americans. He wrote, “The lyncher is a product of American herd mentality,” decrying the failure of police to protect victims and the societal acceptance of such violence. Twain also criticized the mistreatment of minorities, including Chinese immigrants in California and Native Americans, noting in Roughing It (1872), “The white man’s government robs the Indian of his land and calls it justice.”
Kurt Vonnegut, born in 1922 in Indianapolis to German-American parents, was shaped by his German humanist roots, his disillusionment with the idea that science could save the world (after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, when he was 22), and Twain’s satirical style. Vonnegut’s experience as a WWII prisoner of war who survived the Dresden firebombing infused his novels with anti-war fervor. Slaughterhouse-Five used dark humor to critique war’s absurdity, and was published as the Vietnam War was ramping up. The plot follows an American POW who survives Dresden and then realizes that he has come “unstuck in time” (at least from his perspective), experiencing his life in out-of-sequence periods that can last minutes or days, before jumping backward or forward by years; being abducted by aliens and living on their planet with a certain woman he admires; and experiencing his own death. All of these things he experiences over and over. He says:
“I have seen my death many times, and yet here I am, alive. I am grateful for all the moments, good and bad, for they are all part of the same journey. If you see me again, don’t be surprised if I seem different. I am all my moments at once. Farewell, hello, farewell, hello [Chapter 8]…I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976. I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that. You have seen me die before, and you will see me die again. There is no why. Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.” [Chapter 10]
In Chapter 5, Billy Pilgrim, reflecting on his time-unstuck perspective, recalls the Beatitudes, specifically citing, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” as he grapples with war’s brutality. Vonnegut also alludes to the Sermon in his non-fiction collection Palm Sunday (1981). In A Man Without a Country (2005), he wrote, “Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”
In Breakfast of Champions (1973), Vonnegut addresses systemic racism and police violence against minorities. He wrote, “The police are here to keep us safe, but who keeps us safe from them?” His essay Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974) further criticized American militarism and domestic oppression, stating, “We’ve become a nation that loves its guns more than its people,” linking police brutality to a broader culture of violence. Vonnegut’s presidency at the American Humanist Association (1992–2007) echoed Twain’s anti-imperialist stance, emphasizing ethical responsibility over nationalist aggression.
In a 1979 speech at the Mark Twain house, Vonnegut called Twain America’s “master myth-maker” who “used American English to make us all feel like we belong here, no matter where we came from…[who] loved people like a true Christian, even if he didn’t buy the dogma." Both Twain and Vonnegut used satire to expose the hypocrisy of bigoted Christians, and the contradictions between American ideals of freedom and the realities of imperialism and domestic oppression. They criticized the moral hypocrisy of US foreign policy, particularly in the Philippines (Twain) and Vietnam-era interventions (Vonnegut). Both condemned systemic violence against minorities, with Twain focusing on lynchings and Vonnegut on police brutality, reflecting their shared humanist belief in dignity and justice. Their works remain relevant.
Vonnegut rejected capitalism’s excesses in Player Piano and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, advocating for equality and empathy. His disdained privilege and called for community, as seen in Slapstick. He regarded the country’s leaders as “upper-crust C-students” and hoped for a society rooted in kindness, not greed. "True terror,” he wrote, “is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." Vonnegut’s humor, grounded in the absurdities of human behavior, urged readers to resist dominating, dehumanizing systems through collective empathy.
Vonnegut succeeded science/sf-writer Isaac Asimov as honorary president of the American Humanist Association (AHA), from 1992 until his death in 2007. Both embraced humanism’s core tenet of behaving ethically without expectation of afterlife rewards or punishments. Asimov emphasized reason and human responsibility over supernatural beliefs throughout his life. Their presidencies amplified humanism’s focus on skepticism toward religious dogma, advocating for a world united by shared human dignity and ethical action, free from divisive creeds. Both saw humanism as a path to a better world, grounded in compassion and critical inquiry.
In 1992, Vonnegut gave a speech at the Humanist Association’s memorial for Asimov. He would later write, “My great war buddy Bernard V. O’Hare, now dead, lost his faith as a Roman Catholic during World War Two. I didn’t like that. I thought that was too much to lose. I had never had faith like that, because I had been raised by interesting and moral people who, like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were nonetheless skeptics about what preachers said was going on. But I knew Bernie had lost something important and honorable. Again, I did not like that, did not like it because I liked him so much. I spoke at a Humanist Association memorial service for Dr. Asimov a few years back. I said, ‘Isaac is up in Heaven now’. That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles… When I myself am dead, God forbid, I hope some wag will say about me, ‘He’s up in Heaven now’.”
Twain and Vonnegut would be united in their condemnation of Donald Trump as a person and as a symbol of moral and intellectual decay, a narcissistic opportunist who is turning the United States into a fascist dictatorship. Twain, seeing Trump’s wealth and media-driven spectacle, would liken him to a Gilded Age charlatan like Senator Dilworthy, cloaking self-interest in populist rhetoric. Vonnegut would see Trump’s rhetoric as harmful, a divisive, false myth of greatness, and condemn his leadership as “power-drunk chimpanzee” ignorance, as he did George W. Bush’s in 2006. Both would view Project 2025’s theocratic push, mandating Christian teachings in schools, as a shameless degradation of religion and politics, heralding the descent into neo-Confederate fascism. They would excoriate Americans for electing Trump twice, blaming economic stress, intellectual degradation, education budget cuts and the loss of civics class in public schools, herd mentality, and the loss of communal empathy. They’d have immediately recognized Project 2025’s Christian agenda as a theocratic power grab and betrayal of the democratic republic that the Founding Fathers fought to achieve. So it goes.
Here are hundreds of nuggets of wisdom from two of America’s best: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut