The Seven Deadly Sins (26 page)

Then, one day, a wholly different Coke showed up, sitting alongside the ever-dwindling crates of New Coke taking up space on the supermarket shelves. It was called Coca-Cola Classic and it began flying out the door with ever-growing urgency. People sighed a soda-soaked sigh of relief, knowing they had their old reliable back, even if it had been renamed and given to compensate for the mess that New Coke had stirred up. A lot of people have put forth the interesting theory that Coca-Cola used the whole scenario to help kick-start slumping sales of Old Coke, that by taking it away and providing an inferior alternative it jogged people's memories and taste buds and left them wanting their beverages back. It is actually quite ingenious, if that is what the plan had been in the first place. I am not sure I could find anyone today that could tell me what New Coke really tasted like anymore. I have my own recollection, but it is fleeting at best. I only drank Cherry Coke myself.

This business plan has not always been a failure, however. The art of replacing the old with the new has been practiced since the birth of industry. The battles between Schick and Gillette, Levi's and Lee jeans, Ford and Chevrolet are pieces of Americana. The marketplace is only as healthy as the commerce it provides, and the strength and quality of the products ensure an even playing field—fair game for a fight for dominance. Technology has advanced the speed of exceptional design. The biggerbetter-now is as commonplace as the four-slice toaster and as complicated as an LED flat-screen television as thin as a magazine. We as consumers have been conditioned to insist on the latest and greatest. Reciprocation is rewarded with steady and loyal business. Capital ignorance is given a pink slip and the cold shoulder. If you do not believe, ask yourself when was the last time you tried to buy an eight-track tape.

You might be asking yourself, “Where in the hell is he going with all of this?” Well, it just so happens there is quite a bit of method among all this madness. If
Webster's Dictionary
and Monty Python have taught us anything, it is that an argument is a collected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. I am making an argument that these seven suspect deadly sins are not at all what their promo pack has promised. They are neither deadly nor are they sins; rather, they are character flaws that have been worked into every major fictional hero or villain since the dawn of literary time. But they are not sins, as I have said repeatedly and hopefully have successfully proven. Sins are just one of the many things that make us human. I truly disapprove of the idea that we are all very different. I think we have more in common than we realize.

So my proposition is very simple: We need a
new
set of seven deadly sins. We need to update our list of what bends us to scare
the hell out of the rest of the planet. This new list should not only be a reflection of the adverb “deadly,” but it should also be a reflection of the times we find ourselves in now. Times change and so should our notion of what sins are actually
deadly
. They should, by their own nature, be unique. In other words, they need to stand on their own terms and not bleed into one another.

This problem should be evident in the original list. There are sins here that overlap and negate themselves. For instance, I think envy can lead to sins but is not a sin in and of itself. Envy can lead to theft and murder. But just being an envious prick is not enough to burn in the Southern Hot Box. Wanting is a natural drive for us skin-covered geeks. The major duality you have to look at is the close proximity between envy and greed. Like I have said before, you cannot have envy without greed. But can you have greed without envy? See, I believe they cancel each other out. Then you have gluttony—same damn thing. You have three sins on the list that are very near to being indistinguishable. In fact, greed has tendrils that stretch in all directions like ancient ivy climbing the family homestead. It is in vanity and also in lust: The vain are greedy for the attention of others and the lustful are greedy for the sex of pretty much everyone. And any one of these can make us angry when we have no sense that we have been sated.

We are looking at this list in the entirely wrong way. We are dealing with ethereal feelings and not physicality. We are putting forth the notion that feelings are sins, and that is simply wrong. I say if you feel the need to have a list entitled the Seven Deadly Sins, then you should make it direct and deadly. And what kind of a host would I be if I did not have the answers to my own hypothetical questions? Do not answer that—I am serving my world famous Nacho Dip later. Anyway, I have assembled a new
list, a morbid bunch that are not only sins but are also crimes. Some of them may overlap as well, but that never stopped the original authors from making the first list so incestuous. Prepare yourselves, dear readers. I give you the New Seven Deadly Sins:

I know what you are thinking. You are saying to yourself, “You had me until you hit bad music, what the fuck, dude?” Trust me—all questions will be answered at the end, but only those submitted in writing and still only those written in blue or black ink, thank you.

Yep, these are my submissions for the new Deadly Sins, and I think they are infinitely more appropriate than the prior list. When you really look at them, the New Seven has it all: deadly consequences, sinful intentions, and terrible realities. This shit is too real not to be taken seriously. Murder in America alone has climbed steadily since the 1960s. Child abuse is staggeringly prevalent today. Rape has revealed an even darker shade of hell. Torture has become synonymous with “my country 'tis of thee.”
Theft has been with us for hundreds of years, but today it is less about survival and more about profit. Lying was a pauper's folly until the rich realized they could keep better secrets from us by being deceptive. Bad music is just fucking
wrong
. These are modern times, with modern maladies. We need modern sins with modern methods to fight them. Amendments are made to the Constitution as society evolves. Why can't we make the adjustments in our Second Half so we can beat the number one defense by getting it right? Yeah, that is a football reference. Deal with it. Moving on....

As I sit here, getting cigarette ash all over my computer, I realize the original list was assembled because of its delicacies and overtones. But this is not a time for nuance or insinuation. This is a time to be direct. People are fed up with innuendo and euphemisms. They want straight answers to earnest questions, and the new list should be a reflection of this. It should put it out there in bold face where the line starts and ends. The guidelines should not be inferred; lead us not into assumption. Just show us the way and we can get there on our own damn strength. So where the ancients left off, I have decided to proceed with a bit of nostalgia and a firm belief in what should be. Daylight is burning fast within the confines of our legacy. I would hate to leave the party too soon and miss out on the favors, so let's dig in and sort this out before I get arrested for jumping through the glass table, or at least before I streak the neighbors in my Red Skull mask.

Murder is the first on the block. It is the quintessential sin, really: to take a life, whether human or otherwise, out of malice or for profit or for no reason at all. It takes a lot to be more offensive or repulsive than murder. How this was not an original on the first seven I will never know. To me it is a no-brainer: If you take a life, you forfeit your own. That may be a very Right
wing way to view it, but to me some shit is just fucking necessary. Am I the only one who can draw the conclusion that murder in the world has accelerated since the rapid decrease in executions? I think it is because there are no repercussions anymore. If you kill someone and you get convicted, there is a good chance you will end up with a better life than you had before. You will get fed, you will get a bed, and you will have access to an education, an exercise program, and a fairly trained physician. No one lives in fear of breaking the law. We have taken away the last consequence for taking away a life. The ultimate sin should have the ultimate penalty. I do not mean for those whose guilt is on the fence; this form of punishment has no room for ambiguity. I mean if you are guilty of murder beyond a shadow of a doubt, you deserve to die, period. You deserve to be taken out behind the shed and destroyed.

Murder is a violation of your human membership. Trust me: I distinguish between murder and circumstances like death on the battlefield or self-defense against abuse or other criminal activity. I am talking about premeditated, cold-blooded murder. There are people in this world who want to watch it all turn to ash and gray and there is no helping them—no form of rehabilitation will bring them back from the cool black of evil. That kind of numbness is a death inside the human soul, an exit of the compassion that helps us all do incredible things for each other. There are ghouls and there are saviors among us all. Keeping the ghouls around is a waste of time. If we hope to achieve greatness, we must prove there is punishment on this plane of existence. Stop leaving the judgments to a supposed divine spirit; the ignorant do not care that “god is going to send them to hell.” Send them a real message: that we will not tolerate trespasses against our brothers, sisters, children, pets. Vengeance and justice are luxuries we can afford.

Child abuse is something I am even more bombastic about. Being a product of child abuse and neglect, I am very sensitive to this subject. I am almost as fiery about it as I am about murder. Anyone who mistreats a child must be made to suffer as strongly as anyone who kills is made to suffer. A child is really just a blank piece of paper at the end of the day. When you systematically break down and decimate their souls and their innocence, you kill our chances to last forever. The way some children are treated in this day and age is repugnant. We are raising a generation that will thrive on malevolence and pain. You expect us to make it to another millennium when the kids we are bringing into the world cannot even differentiate love from cruelty? I have watched the escalation of child abuse with a panic that is squeezing my heart into pulp with every offense. Who the fuck do these people think they are? They treat children like used tissue and discard them with as much ambivalence. I am horrified at the concept that with enough pain, these kids will grow up to carry on the “family tradition.” The only thing that gives me pause to react is remembering one soul who came out of it with a deeper compassion for the human race: me.

There is no fate I can conjure that would be painful enough for child abusers, especially pedophiles. NAMBLA can try to sway an ignorant populace all they want, but they are still vile fucking scum. I have always believed that a society is only as strong as the ways they protect their children. I have to be honest: I have no idea how strong our nation or the world at large truly is. I see news coverage of atrocities against our young all the time. I feel the pain of the world in my chest and I am stopped dead with anxiety. Can we not all agree that we must protect our young? I do not mean by sheltering them from being kids. I mean by setting precedence and punishing those who perpetrate these acts with cold indifference to their cries for
mercy. They are lower than the darkest seas and more evil than the highest form of corruption. To me, there
is
no higher form of corruption. Child abuse is a steely knife in the heart of our greatest treasures. We need to end it now.

Rape is naturally next because it is consistent with murder in that it destroys those around you and it is a symptom of child abuse as well. Rape can happen to anyone at any time. Rabid dogs in evil heat imposing their bent wills on defenseless victims, rape symbolizes a vestige left in the global psyche where men are still superior to women, where the power still lies within their grim hands. I am not saying it is a by-product of machismo; rather, I am saying it is a mental deficiency where no means yes and unchecked hatred makes a person decide to take away your choices. Rape is disturbing, and even after the physical reminders are long gone, the psychological scars linger for years. Therapy can help heal and rectify some of the damage, but the nightmares never truly go away. I know that for a fact. When someone takes away your ability to choose and to fight back, you are left bleeding and weak, shell-shocked and betrayed. When someone makes you feel truly powerless, it can shatter your heart into a million pieces. You will never look at another person the same way again. Trust may never come back, and sanity takes its time coming back as well. You are a prisoner in your own body—afraid to feel, afraid to love, and afraid to relax at all.

Rapists usually get their just desserts in prison, but, ironically, not by the justice system or the prison itself. Their punishment is served by the other prisoners. It is probably the last form of retribution left. The same can be said for pedophiles and child murderers: They receive a cruel form of punishment that makes even someone as cynical as me queasy. If that is what it takes, then so be it. People need to fear the justice that awaits them.
They need to know that there are fucking consequences for their actions. They need to be held accountable for their crimes. I have no pity for a rapist's fate. I have no pity for criminals who take innocence and grind it under their boot heels. I have no pity for people who cannot feel pity themselves. I would gladly fan the smoke from their charred carcasses with a sense that penance had been served. That was the one thing our ancestors got right: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a fucking life. If you expect people to obey rules and laws, you have to send a clear message that there are exceptional punishments for those who choose not to. It is called prevention. It is time we upped the ante again.