by Roman McClay
“We can agree,” the fat cop said; he wasn’t 100% certain what he was agreeing to, but he was eager to get to the good part at the end when this asshole confessed. He wanted his clearance. A clearance meant dopamine, and dopamine meant a feeling of accomplishment. Not that Detective Carr knew that; but he knew enough to like it when he got a perp to confess.
“Ok, since that is the case, what’s a man to do with these manifold feelings he has? He is piqued and vexed by the amount of dirt being done to him by lovers and brothers and putative friends. What’s he to do? Well, he begins by looking to the stories of his culture. He reads the Bible and Dostoyevsky and the bard ; he maybe catches a flick or two with Clint Eastwood, right?” he smiled.
The cops smirked.
“And he -if he is a man - begins to see some options with his own two eyes. And those options are to take the law into his own hands, his capable hands, his rough but just hands. His manu duri. And he decides that even if he were to get caught it would be worth it to extirpate these evil-doers he has marked for death .
“He would be doing right by his own soul, by his tribe, his country, his God. He’d harm not the innocent like these fucking school shooters and serial killers who kidnap kids and evil shit like that. No, he targets only the evil themselves. He kills only those who deserve it; no civilians.
“And he does this because he knows his natural instincts in this regard are right, are true, are universal; he knows every man -every real man - feels this way; and he knows that the only reason they don’t get revenge is out of fear. Men fear incarceration or death more than they fear the marring, the corrupting, the death of their soul . They have their priorities all wrong.
“And trust me -my dear officers of the court- allowing this sewer of a culture to continue -with maleficence and misleading and malicious deceptions- continue to go on and on without rebuke or rejoinder is killing the souls of good men. It’s ruining our world.
“Now, I don’t know if you’re religious men,” he said. He gave them room -silence- in which to answer.
“I’m a Christian,” the short cop said; “Catholic,” added the fat man.
“Good, so you’ve read the good book and I’m sure you remember some things and have forgotten others, so let me ask if you know James 1:26, wherein God states that unless a man keeps a tight rein on their tongue, he deceiveth himself and that his religion is worthless . God says that a man who gossips and acts like a friend to a man’s face but slanders that friend behind his back is not a religious man.
“Yet, how many of us gossip? How many? All of us, right? We are always talking shit behind people’s backs; and smiling like baboons to their faces. This is something that’s natural and allowed; we accept it as normal so much so that it doesn’t even seem wrong, does it? But we know that it is. It’s wrong; and so, I took a vow to try with all my heart to stop gossiping and I’ve been more successful that I thought possible.
“I’ve had to tell people what I think of them straight to their faces now. And that ain’t easy let me tell you; but a code is a code, and a man -a real man- must have a code. Anyway, that is mine, and I offer it to you as food for thought.
“Next, Ephesians 4:24, excuse me, 4:25, again God insists that men not lie to each other, that quote, we’re all of one body, and there we must speak truthfully to our neighbor. Now, you and I both know that we -all of us- lie incessantly. Crooks lie to get out of trouble, cops lie to get crooks to let down their guard and we all lie non-stop to bosses and children and husbands and wives. Scientific studies have been done that show that married couples lie once every eleven interactions, and mere boyfriend and girlfriends lie one in seven,” he smirked. “Can you believe it? We lie so much we don’t even notice anymore. I bet you two think you’re honest don’tcha ?” he prodded them.
“As honest as most,” the fat cop said. “I don’t think we’ve lied to you yet have we?”
“Ah, you probably are honest as most -which means pretty dishonest- and I have no idea if you’ve lied to me yet; as I’ve been the only one talking so far,” he laughed a bit now.
“But,” he began, “I’ll give you your shot to make up all manner of shit; I promise. But for now, I’m just saying that the Bible , as the word of God according to your own ontological presuppositions, right? I mean you believe the Bible is the word of God, yes?” he asked.
They nodded slowly as if it were some trick he was playing on them .
“Well, then gossiping and lying is verboten; and in fact God is pretty harsh about the consequences of this shit; he says if you don’t live by these dictates you’re not actually religious at all; he’s excommunicating you essentially.
“Next, Psalm 7:11, God is angry with the wicked every day . Boom,” he said with a fervor -and volume- that made the cops jerk just slightly in their seats. It was barely perceptible at all. But all three men noticed it. And the calculous between them reset.
“That’s hardcore,” the man added with a big grin. “God, is angry everyday. Now, I must admit, this is my favorite part of God, the angry and jealous god . That’s my guy, man,” he smiled and the cops smiled too.
“And it’s right there in the Psalms man; he is angry each day with the wicked. Well, since that’s the case -and we can dismiss this gentle Jesus, meek and mild crap- we can assume that the wicked are vexing God every day, and He thinks of them every day, and He is waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to take action. Every day He waits.
“He’s thinking, and I know you’ve also thought this; as I’ve thought this as a business owner and leader of men, I’ve thought, why must I handle every goddamn thing, why can’t someone show some initiative here and solve the problem we all fucking see ?” his face grew serious and grave and the cops found themselves having to bend a once sympathetic smiled down into a scowl to match him. They were mirroring him as he was getting closer to spilling the beans, they felt it in the natural mirror of their bones.
“God is angry everyday and we sit around and let this wicked, lying, gossiping asshole get away with perfidy and purloining of property and the seduction of other men’s wives. We allow it, we just shrug our shoulders and allow it. You know that in Afghanistan and other Islamic countries they will kill an adulterer; and they will kill a girl who sleeps around or kill a man who seduces another man’s wife?
“They don’t merely cluck their tongues gentlemen, they act. They act in accordance with God’s Universal Law. And, these are men and women just like us in every biological way. The only difference is culture; their culture says it’s their right and their responsibility to keep order -especially sexual order- by any means necessary. And they do it; for they take their religion seriously. And these are not monsters or sociopaths or murderers in any conventional sense. These are grandmothers and their grandsons, cousins of the injured, these are families who take out their own trash; just as men did for all of history until about 5 minutes ago in the west,” he said this and smiled and the cops waited to smile. They kept their harsh faces, for they were tired of following this up and down.
“But in our culture this -these honor killings- are illegal and taboo; so we must sit around on our hands, twiddling our thumbs as women are sluts and men are cuckolded and the liars and scoundrels are allowed to walk free; they walk around with impunity and we do nothing and these infractions corrupt not just the dirty little boys and girls that do this shit, they corrupt us all.
“Their behavior and the lack of consequences sullies us all; corrupts all our souls. We become as dirty and filthy and immoral as they. All that is necessary for evil to triumph, Burke said, is for good men to do nothing ,” he paused and glared at these men’s stern faces.
“We as a culture have done nothing. Good men like you and me have sat around for decades and allowed gossip and shit talk, cheating and lying, rip offs and scams and betrayals of friendships that link us all arm to arm to arm. There is no order anymore, the widening Gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer . Right? We
live in a totally corrupt and smirking, sarcastic, little society now; we live under the tyranny of irony. Nobody takes anything seriously anymore, everyone does dirt on everyone else. And it’s all a big joke.
“No one is loyal or willing to sacrifice or even to speak honestly to the faces of friends, lovers or brothers. We are all conspirators in this bullshit. Nobody speaks up about it,” he said and took a deep breath. He watched as the cops began to open their mouths to rebut his insults and condemnations of the whole world.
“Not everyone is bad, son. You have just been around the wrong people,” the short cop said. He had no attachment to what he said. He just spoke like respiration. But, the man had indeed been around all the wrong people; the cop wasn’t wrong.
“Have you ever read Primo Levi? ” the man asked the cop. “Or Bloodlands , the book on Stalin and WWII? Anyway, Levi was a guy who escaped the lagers , the camps, and he said that anyone who survived the camps was by definition a bad person. Why?
“Well, because the Nazis fed them 600 calories a day; and nobody could survive on that for long -maybe a few months- unless they stole food from someone else, or figured out some other scam to increase their own rations,” he looked at the fat cop, “now you could survive on 600 calories a day for like a year, but these Jews in the camps were not, well, they had no ballast, no insulation, so that 600 calorie diet was gonna kill them pronto unless they got mean and nasty, clever, post haste .
“And the guy who wrote Badlands said the same thing of the Russian; that the war was so bad that only those who discarded morality, only those that killed and ate their cousin or kids or parents, only those that did the most horrid things survived the austerity of that war.
“Primo Levi noticed that those Jews that did survive the camps often committed suicide later. He surmised they did so because they couldn’t live with the guilt. We paper over survivor’s guilt by attributing it to some vague malaise of soul. But Levi named it; he said these survivors -himself included- knew that they survived only because they had been thieving and slandering and wretched and craven and sinister in every way. And that is why they killed themselves after the war; after surviving the war and the camps.
“We’re all the product of those bottlenecks in history; from our earliest and most remote ancestors, down to 10,000 humans at one point. From them through thousands of conflagrations and wars and genocides and retail murders and barbarous enslavements and raping and robbing until the blood rose up to our eyes. From then to now these are our ancestors, we are the product of hundreds of thousands of years of the worst types of people surviving and the best dying while keeping their virtue, their honor and their pride.
“Moral people died, the morally flexible survived. And we, my good friends, we -you and I- we are the sons and daughters of men, not saints; we’re from and of cannibals, criminals and the most vile and piratical men and women of all,” he said and stared into the eyes of the fat cop.
“Well, then how do you explain good?” the short cop asked. “Surely there’s good in people that even you see, and good in yourself.” The cop was being crafty now. He was proud of that sentence or two.
“Yes, goodness, moral thinking does survive, like a vestigial organ, like a mind-virus that burrows in the brain and the sinew of some noble men. True. I think you have it, as cops you want to do good; I believe that. I mean that, I’m not being facetious. And I agree that I still believe in goodness and want it from me and from thee.
“But, it’s a Sisyphean task, it is an endless uphill battle with our lower, baser instincts for survival and social acceptance. We are cowards and while we know right from wrong, we allow evil to go on because we don’t want to speak up; why? For fear of losing our jobs or our friends or having to sleep on the couch due to pissing off the wife. We fear getting in trouble or going broke or being outcasts if we say the truth or even worse; if we act on the truth. Please don’t pretend to not know what I mean,” he said as they pretended to not know what he meant.
“Our jobs are based on acting on the good and the truth; we lock up the bad guys every day,” the short cop was defensive; the fat one was nodding along. Now they were actually arguing their case. They’d begun to take this personally. And for this the man confessing was glad; he liked personal. He hated the impersonal.
“Your jobs are predicated on locking up some of the bad guys; but you’re enjoined to let plenty of bad guys go, right? You’re told to stand down, your mission statement says nothing of preventing the endless lies and scams and corrupt shit that goes on at the smallest to the largest levels. When’s the last time you jailed a man for lying to his children; or the CEO of a corporation for making a false or misleading claim on a TV commercial?”
“That is not our jurisdiction,” the fat cop said.
“Dialogue de sourds ,” the man said with pique and then burst open half way. “That’s my point, mother,” he paused half way through that 12-letter word and collected himself. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But, you’re making my point. Your job is limited, you can only go after certain people doing certain dirt. My charter -as a man of God- allows me to go after the rest; I clean up the crumbs you leave out of your dragnet.”
“Yeah,” the fat cops then said, “let’s talk about your charter, as you say; let’s get out of the clouds and down to brass tacks.”
“That mixed metaphor aside,” their man in the box -their man in interview room #3- grimaced in embarrassment for the cop. “I’d like to wrap this up my own way if you don’t mind. Take yes, for an answer, don’t hurry me when I’ve already agreed to your terms.”
They all stayed quiet for a moment. The man spoke again once he’d made his point.
“Now, like I was saying; mankind is capable of good. But his culture hems him in; and the only way for him to circumnavigate his culture is to transgress it. He must break the law. He must. The law itself is unjust. Just like it used to be the law that a man could own another man; or that if you helped a slave escape you -in fact- were the criminal. The law used to say booze was illegal; that any man who took a drink, an outlaw. The law used to be all manner of things.
“But men of conscience broke those laws while most men went along. Most men, even if they knew slavery was wrong, went along, went along, went along. Men are cowards; they’re Pharisees. They don’t care about justice; they only care about the legal code, the letter of the law; not the spirit. And this is why we live in immoral times, because men know the right and wrong way, but they ignore it and instead follow the law.
“How many Germans in 1933 followed the laws the Nazis passed? How many Germans -good Germans - followed the fucking law? Until you realize that men are cowards and cannot think for themselves; until you realize that it takes a man of courage and honor and self-sacrifice and intelligence to break unjust laws and act as conscience for us all, until then you can never understand the truth about men; nor about laws.
“Laws are insufficient; they are mere guidelines. They cannot handle the complexity of real-world transgressions; it takes a vigilante with conscience and heart to do good; and that man needs -also- a high IQ to minimize collateral damage and mistakes that get innocent people hurt.
“A psychopath will hurt anyone without discrimination; he won’t give a fuck about the innocent. A stupid man will mistake an innocent person for a guilty one and accidentally harm someone who should have been immune from such things.
“No, it takes a moral man, who couldn’t stomach harming an innocent person, who has reflexes at the level of the limbic and basal systems that prevent wholesale slaughter. And it takes a man with four or five standard deviations from the mean that can handle the requisite amount of data necessary to discern the innocent from the guilty; and not make mistakes in a panic or a fit of crepuscular blindness.”
“And you’re this man?” the cop was eager. And he didn’t understand every 9th word. It was as frustrating as a phone conversation where the audio cut out 11% of each sentence. It made you
want to hang up.
“I am,” he -the man- agreed.
“Well, if you’re so smart then how did you get caught?” the short cop asked. They were ignoring the fact that he’d turned himself in; turned himself in to the mucky muck in the other room.
“Ah, you assume I wanted to avoid capture and incarceration. See, that is your first of many mistakes detectives,” he smiled.
“Are you a Godly man?” the short cop asked with a scowl.
“Oh, no. I’m an atheist. But that is what makes God’s use of me so perfect and actually it’s what proves its genius and righteousness. Any wacko religious nut, from Islamicists to people who hear God give them instructions via the fillings in their teeth, all those guys are suspect as God’s messengers. I’m dubious of their claims.
“They lack the skepticism that I have. I don’t even believe in God, so when He uses me to do His will it makes all the more sense, as I don’t want to believe this. I had no predisposition to hearing voices or interpreting God’s word from pieces of burnt toast or the song lyrics of some Chris Isaak song,” he laughed.
“Shit, I’m a rationalist, a totally non-religious man. And so, when used by God to effect His will, I was the perfect instrument. It took the genius of God to use a man like me. I mean, look at the results. Every one that was killed was a fornicator, a liar, a gossiper, a betrayer. Shit, betrayers are down at the bottom of Dante’s 9th level of Hell, flanking an icy Satan himself. There were no innocent men, women or children in my wake. I did God’s bidding in accordance with his own words. If you doubt the Bible , that is your choice, but you can’t say what I did wasn’t according to scripture; for it was. So, you can deny scripture, or you can admit I’m right; there is not a third option,” the man said.
“Well, who takes you out then? You’re a murderer and a liar and betrayer,” the fat cop not unreasonably asked .
