Sanction

by Roman McClay

  But goddammit, when I set pen and ink to page, I want to stretch out and expatiate a bit; for I have something else to say that others do not or cannot. I have more inside me that uncoils like the whale-line, which if you’re smart and have read The Whale know is worth pondering a bit more than the dramatic thrust of those who ‘get to the point ’ and hurl the fucking harpoon; which often missed the mark I might add. It was the whale line that haunted the crew, it was the whale line that drowned Fedallah by tying him to the Whale and pulled Ahab down -and away from God- to his Doom. It was the endless whale line that went on long; and yet not long enough…

  The Interviews XCII Vol. 55a [Inmate 16180339]

  But to come to those who have become princes through ability rather than good fortune, I say that the most outstanding were Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus and the like. And though one should not mention Moses, because he was the mere executor of things commanded by God, still he deserves admiration if only for that divine grace which made him worthy to speak with God

  The Prince [Machiavelli, Niccolo]

  I. 2020 e.v.

  “It’s not 100%, but it’s better than in the old days,” he smiled, making these ironic jokes helped even though no one liked the jokes. She smiled. She tried to breathe; it was just nice to be around people who still could make small jokes , she thought.

  “How new a procedure is it?” James asked. He saw the medical degree from some university on the wall. He held the doctor’s card in his hand and looked down at it, with all those appellations, the MDs and OBGYNs and on and on that proved he knew what he was doing, and James suspected, that he thus knew who he was.

  “Well, we’ve had trials, with success, but you would be the first actual patient; the first out-of-study recipient. Out of,” he began but James held up his hand as if to assure him he understood the argot . They had been studying up on all this and felt they could pass the medical boards by now.

  “But, like I said, the trials have been excellent; and it requires very little in the way of hormonal therapy or drugs or all the heavy lifting the mom usually does for in vitro or the other procedures used in the last 20 years. It’s a shot, and vitamins and one additional 4-week shot once conception is verified and that is it; of course, until year two when the child gets his or her final shot, first and final,” the doctor added clumsily.

  “When would we take the first shot?” she asked.

  “Well, have you taken a pregnancy test?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes,” they both said on top of one another, James held Greymille’s hand as it rested in her lap. She liked to cover the grave, not just with her clothes, two layers even in summer, but with her hands. She loved winter, then she could add gloves and a coat. Then the grave would be safer.

  “And positive I take it?” the doctor asked with a smile.

  They nodded.

  “Well, then we can take the shot today if you like; the cellular material is encoded with all it needs once conception takes hold; so, it’s really up to you,” the doctor said.

  “Is sooner better?” she asked.

  “When did you lose,” the doctor nodded toward her and hoped he would not have to finish the sentence.

  They agreed with that and Greymille said, as quickly as she could, rushing through the memory, the words, “last year, winter time.”

  “I mean, how many weeks along?” the doctor clarified.

  “Oh, 13, I think, day 89,” she said; hoping they could move on now.

  “And have there been any other pregnancies lost or taken to term?”

  “No,” James said. Greymille sat silently.

  Greymille didn’t disagree, she felt an honest answer wouldn’t matter to her decision anyway. She would wait for the doctor to say his piece, but she was taking the shot today. It felt like a vaccine against death to her, and she wanted to protect her baby from that pale rider and maybe wall him -and she felt it was indeed a he- wall him off from God’s wrath just long enough that maybe God would lose interest in punishing her -to let him, her son, come be a man in the world- and then God could let her -the guilty one- have it; let her suffer all He wanted.

  That was a fair deal , she thought. And God apparently thought so too; she took the shot and carried that baby boy to term. Jack was 7lbs 8 oz and tow headed and brown eyed and ruddy, and quiet; he cried enough to be human, but no more than that.

  II. 2023 e.v.

  It was a whirlwind and voices came from all cardinal directions and the crow flew low and close to the ground, which was barren and fallow and hard. Two men spoke in the dream.

  “And of course, they never think of it that way. But think of this, if your buddy is drunk and wants to drive are you obliged to stop him? Are you culpable if he drives and harms someone if you did not intervene ?

  “The bartender is responsible already, right? Legally he can be sued for overserving,” Lyndon said.

  “Yeah, that is true, I had not thought of that. I just worry about the cash value of this mindset, it leads to bad things. Collective punishment leads to honor killings,” Sam Harris said.

  “Yes, and unchecking promiscuity leads to divorce rates of 50-60% which leads to increase in crime, suicide, anti-social behavior writ large ,” Lyndon said.

  “Well,” Sam objected.

  “There’s no, well about it. This is true. These are facts. Divorce leads to massive social maladies too. It’s basic math, causality, and epidemiology. It takes 10 minutes to explain and if you’re honest, 1 minute to get, but you have to want to know the data, the truth. I mean you’re like the fat kid that wants to eat candy all day and when the doctor says, hey that ain’t healthy, here’s the data on diabetes and tooth decay , the fat kid says, you’re a patriarchal fascist! ” Lyndon said with a grin.

  “First, I want to get back to your case, what you did,” Sam said.

  “Look, I was devastated, financially ruined, by the theft that only marginally improved his -Michael, the thief’s- financial situation, and the State refused to get involved. So, it is a classic example of honor culture dynamics. I had to act, my own body required it; I am Scottish, I am southern, and this is true.

  “Everyone has their breaking point; everyone. So, don’t pretend you don’t have one. Just because mine is more ancient and I submit, more manly, doesn’t make it wrong. And, furthermore, I sent Jeremy -the guy lying to my face- a section of Nisbett’s book that explained Scottish sheepherder dynamics and genealogical amalgams with cultural norms and the reason you should not fuck with southern Scottish rednecks, and he called it Gobbledygook , he literally called it that. And he proceeded to dishonor me by sleeping with my girl behind my back for years as he made fun of me with others as if the whole thing was a big joke. He deserves what he got precisely because I warned him and he ignored it and did it anyway,” Lyndon said.

  “Deserved death?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “Yes. And Hell after.”

  “Wow,” Sam paused.

  “Yeah wow. Son, I ain’t built like you and I’d never want to be like you. Modern liberal society is bullshit, and if I fucked your wife, you ought to come for my head. If you don’t then you are not a real man. Period. And a long life outside of prison with no honor is worse than a short -but honorable- life or a life incarcerated. There is more than one kind of death and one kind of imprisonment, and I submit that the dishonorable, modern life where you let shit go and let the cops handle it and blah blah is Hell, it is a disgusting, weak and contemptible life, and I’d rather be dead than a coward and a fool who never handles his business like a man.

  “Do you think people who play video games all day and buy scratch-off lotto tickets and shoot up meth have a good life? What if I said that way was the way to live for 200 years? Would you want to live 200 years like that ? No, you don’t, and no you wouldn’t. Well I don’t think liberals with no damn honor have a good life either, no matter how long and free it may seem,” Lyndon paused.

  Sam was wrinkling his forehead
and nose now.

  “Plus, we over imprison people for fist fights and violence that ought to be sanctioned, and thus because we punish instead, we’ve built an approach to crime that augments men’s own violence by sending them to gladiator academy for a fist fight. Non-violent drug criminals which are only 7% or so of total prison populations are not the norm, the norm are anti-social types; and we are infecting men with additional anti-social mores in prison, not rehabilitating them.

  “We are taking honor-bound men and instead of respecting their code, and helping them achieve honor, we are telling them that their innate jealousy is apish and making them a monkey and further insulting them. We are telling them that they are puerile and no good, and when they react on their native instincts and punch out the guy who banged their girl we send them to prison for 5-years on aggravated assault and then they are in a petri dish of violence that makes them even more hostile and anti-social when they get released.

  “We ought to be giving men the respect they deserve by making it taboo-as-fuck to lie, cheat and steal, so taboo that when a guy punches another guy out that -in fact- the guy with the bloody nose and guilty conscience doesn’t even call the cops, the punched man knows he was wrong and that is why he got punched. But if he does call, and the cops arrive and find out the so-called victim with a bloody nose fucking deserved it, the cops ought to refuse to arrest the putative aggressor. That would be justice and it would keep most men in line and out of jail and be a net positive for society.

  “My friend Todd punched a guy who raped his sister, the guy raped his sister and the cops said there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the rapist, and Todd, who got even, who defended his own and his sister’s honor, did 5 years because the guy got hurt badly by Todd’s devastating punch. That is wrong.

  “Todd ought to have been given a medal; but his own family disowned him over it; and we no longer allow retributive violence; because Pinker and other unethical faggots think the State having a monopoly on violence is all upside and all roses. But it ain’t. Their side, your side, doesn’t even have the math on your side!

  “And I’ll go one further, if I kill the men who disrespected me it will be because it was easier to get away with than merely punching them out; if I knew I would not go to jail for 10-years for assault -which people get now for that shit- then I wouldn’t have to shoot them. I could just tune them up a little and call it even. But the DNA evidence alone is reason not to go with fists. So, the Draconian, ultra-modern, zero-tolerance law caused an escalation in the way a criminal will think, because low-level retributive violence is punishable by massive prison sentences now; and now there is no reason not to kill a man; donning a ski-mask armed with a suppressed 9mm, leaving no witnesses alive.

  “We could allow -as a society- fist fights again over reasonable offences; just like the ancient duel. This would reduce violence not increase it. But, it would also deter anti-social -but legal- behavior by people who are so modern and so liberal and so nihilistic that they think: it ain’t illegal to bang my buddy’s wife, it ain’t illegal to lie, shit, I can rob a guy of his MMJ business because the courts won’t give the victim standing, ho ho.

  “This lack of accountability via the State, and a prohibition by the individual to act, is a recipe for moral disaster, that increases immoral behavior writ large . It’s the broken window theory; and it is true.

  “The consequentialist attitude is that the cost to society can be measured, well, this is a measurement, an empirical account of it,” Lyndon breathed out.

  “Yeah but promiscuity leading to divorce? I bet its more complicated than that,” Sam said without any clue of anything.

  “I can make the case, and the data is there,” Lyndon said.

  “Really?” Sam said.

  “Yes, females that are virgins on their wedding night have a 90+% success rate for marriages; and it drops to 50% with the first non-marital partner. It goes down to 25% success rates when sexual partners -for females only mind you- when a woman has partners in excess of 20. So, yeah there is a direct correlation that when mapped onto men’s attitudes becomes an almost certain causality. Further,” Lyndon was saying.

  “Well,” Sam interrupted to show doubt.

  “Look, men hate slutty women, it is their number one requirement when asked in study after study. They insist that they will not marry promiscuous women and given their druthers will take a virgin over any other trait. Further, it is a fact that male promiscuity has no correlation for marriage success at all. Men can have 100 partners and their marriages succeed or fail with zero correlation to that fact. And women do not care about it -about their mate’s pervious sexual behavior- so the female self-reporting of values shows an exact negative or mirror image to men’s attitudes in every way. It shows that the empirical data and the rational theoretical framework all buttress the idea that marriages rise or fail on female purity and male, relative male, economic power. QED”

  “I did not know that. I’d need to see the data,” Sam blubbered.

  “I can provide it,” Lyndon said. “And divorce kills kids, as you know, step dads kill their step kids at a rate so high as to make it safer for kids to have just the single mother, which it itself a disaster, but it is safer than remarriage. And the young men who shoot up schools turn out to be 90% from fatherless homes. I mean do we care about kids or not? Or do we care that co-eds get to bang 10 guys ‘cause muh freedom, derp, freedom, man ?” He had begun doing voices to denote the way dumb people speak and Sam was growing weary. Sam was used to feeling like he had facts and data and logic on his side; he was not used to being schooled.

  “Look,” Lyndon said, “we must care about this anarchic state of affairs if we are to be morally serious, even just using your consequentialist argument, the argument you are backing away from now that it has ahem, consequences that you do not like.

  “We are currently proving we care more about female sexual freedom than crime rates, kids’ health, suicide rates, depression, lying, theft, shitty communities with shitty neighborhoods. Look at 77% of black kids not having a dad in the home and all the sequela that comes from that? I mean, you brought up the example of what if internet fraud turns out to have consequences we don’t know about that cost us a trillion dollars and kills people fiddle-fucking around with their phone password whilst driving and hit a tree at 75mph , and as you put it, what if it turns out to be the worst thing in the world ?

  “Well, promiscuity for females looks very much like the worst thing in the world with a simple 3-step problem a corvid could figure out,” Lyndon folded his arms.

  “Wow, I’m not usually speechless,” Sam Harris said.

  “It’s good for you; it’s a good look for you,” Lyndon said, “and it gets worse.”

  “Great,” Sam deadpanned.

  “Well, you brought it up with your discussion with Tamler, and you brought up Christian what’s-his-name the neo-Nazi who kicked blacks in the head with his Doc Martens, but he acts all nice-nice now, he’s all reformed, and so he gets to make money and gets interviews -and the guy is just insane in many ways too, he slanders people which you have to clean up after him- but a guy like me who has hurt no one yet, done nothing yet , and I say: hey this is a book I’ve written that is a huge thought experiment for the violent white male who thinks retributive justice is ideal and moral and pragmatic and here’s why not to do it, and instead come move to my wilderness compound and build a pro-social community and be a good human but a noble human too, and yet I am ignored.

  “I mean this interview is not real, it’s a dream and you and I both know that you will not interview me. I am a nobody, and the fact that I am more moral than Christian the Nazi, who was a violent racist for years is irrelevant to you, and the fact that to interview me and help sell my book will prevent me from moving forward on my diabolic plans and will also help prevent others as well would be a massive and concrete net positive, all of that still will not get me interviewed, or endorsed by you or 60 minu
tes or anyone else who has this love affair with this unlettered, ex-Nazi asshole.

  “So, yeah, I don’t take you or anyone in the modern moral landscape seriously, you have a real chance to promote: one, a more moral man who has harmed no one; two, an artist who has written an actual piece of high art; and three, the success of my project will prevent murders not just by me but by other people who will be dissuaded from nihilism by my moral argument made from a perspective not unlike theirs. And they can come live on my land in a community built for and by them, and yet, you will not give it one moment’s thought.

  “And I predict you will say, you won’t do it because it feels like moral blackmail, that I am threatening to kill unless you buy my book, or additionally, that I am not famous enough yet, unlike Christian the chubby Nazi asshole who was already on TED and 60 -fake news- minutes et.al.,” he breathed deeply and continued as the sun was coming up in the world.

  “Well, that is dumb, I am not threatening anything, I am saying I am human, and if I have nothing to live for in life, if I am ruined, then my ability to prevent my dark side from winning is vitiated, as it is for anyone; all men have breaking points. And two, just because I ain’t famous yet, does not mean you shouldn’t be the first to showcase me; especially since my book is so goddamn good. You can bray about being a neuro-scientist and best-selling author on your website and nobody blanches, but if I bray about my IQ or alpha status it’s all too gauche for your sensibilities. Well, the working man has to bray & brag about what his genome is, about his IQ if he’s tested in the top 1% because what else does he have?

  “He has no imprimatur from the institutions all you fucks run. He has no high-status job at Harvard as Professor, so he must brag about what he is and he must do so overtly because he has no business card, no degree on the wall, nobody is listening to him. Why do you think rappers all brag? Because nobody has listened to them even one time in their lives. Yuval Noah Harari just told you that being irrelevant and ignored is the worst thing a society can do to a man. He just told you that and you still don’t get it. You made jokes at the working classes expense when he told you that. You literally made a joke of it.