The Tale of Bellerophon

As school children we are taught the myths of various old-world societies. Most of them are Cautionary Tales. Fables and Myths are used to teach children about the societal structure they live in so that they might conform to their society and thereby be “accepted”.

In Greek Myth, there was a hero named Bellerophon who, while trying to atone for murdering someone, finds himself crossways with a king because of a lying queen, but who can’t kill Bellerophon himself, so he sends him to his father-in-law, who also cannot kill him, so he sends him out on suicidal quests in an attempt to let that do him in so his hands are clean.

Bellerophon completes the tasks and marries a princess, but he feels like he’s not being shown enough deference, not being given the proper tribute and eventually finds within his brain, the idea that he should be living on Olympus with the gods. He gathers Pegasus, the steed who helped him complete his quests, and starts riding up to Olympus. Zeus sends a gadfly to bite Pegasus, Bellerophon falls and there are two endings to the tail. In the kindest one, he dies. In the lesson he lives, crippled by his fall, constantly reminded of what he once was and never will be again.

Nowhere, in any mythos, is the lesson of hubris so clearly taught as from that of the Ancient Greeks. Hubris is defined as excessive pride or self-confidence or arrogance. To be exact, the Greeks were speaking of sense of entitlement.

In the past few years the word entitlement has been thrown around quite a bit, and sadly, it has been the most apt description of a certain segment of our society that considered themselves our modern-day heroes and felt entitled to certain perks and deference. They felt themselves above the fray and deserving of things that no one else in their right minds would give them.

In the past couple of years, this certain segment of society has shown themselves to be undeserving of anything they now demand or see as their right. Their… entitlement.

This segment is known as The Press. If it were left up to them, the letters would be huge, well lit and we would all bow down to them. They are deserving of our worship for bringing us their “truth”.

The Press used to be respected and they used to do a very good job of relaying to the common people, the truth, and they kept our politicians honest by exposing their dishonest behavior, graft and greed. However, that all changed about one hundred years ago. Suddenly, they realized that people trusted them, trusted that what they said was the truth. I mean, that’s what they kept saying so it must be the truth, right?

They rose to the nadir of their power in the 1970s when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein outed the Nixon administration for its high crimes and misdemeanors. That, then, became the number one goal of every kiddie coming out of J-School. Instead of a reporter covering his beat, each byline became a cult of personality. And it wasn’t just confined to journalists in print, but on television, and eventually on the internet.

The internet was troublesome for our Journos. It was easy to look up things. In real time, even. Their lies could not stand in the brightness of such light being shone upon their narratives. Suddenly, thinking people no longer accepted what the New York Times of NBC were telling them. If they wondered about it, they could go online and start their own investigating. Slowly, people began to pull away from the official narrative we were all supposed to swallow, and they began asking questions. 

Then something happened. Something horrible happened. There was the birth of a being that tried to tell the truth, what was really happening, what they saw with their own eyes. Yes, the hated Blogger was born. They had these sites where they explained what the Journos were touting as the truth, and what was really happening.

Then someone even worse happened, online news became big. Journos who were not touting the party line, who had no concern that their truth might block their access to the halls of power and held truth as the most important part of their job. Andrew Breitbart was the hero in that tale. His life was cut short, and his loss is mourned to this day by people what knew him and knew of him.

Then, the worst thing possible happened. Alt-Media happened. It was attacked as racist, uber-conservative, and the pejorative term, Nazi was applied by people who lacked imagination and historical reference.

Alt-Media changed the game. People like Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Luke Rudkowski weren’t just armchair Journos, like most Bloggers were considered, they were out in the field, with cameras, showing the world what was really happening in real time. They were called liars, bigots, and Nazi. That term was used excessively to the point the word lost all meaning at all.

Journos were proud. We were just supposed to accept what they were telling us was the truth. Questioning their truth was akin to being a traitor, the most crass of betrayals. Questioning them was met with cries of words that held no meaning. To be questioning meant you were other, in the out group, not to be trusted. It worked for a little while. A very little while.

Alt-Media hit back hard. This was met with deplatforming, something only seen in Orwell novels. Anyone who went against the Journo narrative, on any subject whatsoever, was to be unpersoned, erased from all memory. New words were created to keep them down. Alex Jones and Sargon of Akkad were among those they tried to deny income.

Alt-Media didn’t go down like it was supposed to. The Journos kept lying, telling you that they were the only ones who could give you certain information and it was treason to no listen and believe them. They formed marches, jumped in front of any camera, screaming and committing desperate acts, like claiming supporters of a sitting president were out attacking people in Chicago at 1 AM because of race. It didn’t matter that no proof could be provided, it happened because they said it happened, and frankly, the show the celebrity was on was sinking like a lead weight.

During these times when Journos despaired of gaining the acclaim and praise, they saw as their due, the chance came up to show the world that they were right. It didn’t matter that they knew it wasn’t true, so they cut out everything that would deny their narrative, they didn’t think, they didn’t hesitate, they put the story out there, forgetting that these days, everyone is a Journo. Everyone has cameras and the ability to show things as they are happening.

The Journos had achieved their Peter Principle. They had risen to the height of their incompetence. Immediately, the world could see what they had done, exactly how they had done it and that they were condemning children, victimizing children, to further their narrative. Suddenly, people stopped, angry, and began to look seriously at Alt-Media, who were quick to tell the truth. The Journos, feeling the heat of public disapprobation, slowly began to apologize to the children, who, just hours before, they had been damning to the darkest pits of hell and demanding their deaths, by sending their message out to the crazed people who still believed them.

Then Olympus saw them reaching for heights they had no right to reach and they pulled the rug out from under them. Journos began losing their jobs. They weren’t just fired, many of their employers went out of business, they were eliminated from the heights of their ego. They whined and cried that this was happening to them. How could this happen to the privileged Journos? This wasn’t supposed to be possible. They were to be celebrated and lauded for merely being Journos. They cried far and wide about injustice.

The reaction from the people who they had tried to hoodwink for one hundred years rose up. They were without sympathy, especially segments of society that the Journos had scorned and scourged. Blue collar being, the butt of every Journo joke and scathing reply rose up and used a phrase that the Journos had used against them when they had lost their industry and jobs.

Learn to Code.

And the gods smiled down on the Blue Collars who had begged the goddess Nemesis for vengeance on the insipid, ignorant and downright stupid Journos.

The Journos cried and said it was a concentrated attack of the kind they used on Alt-Media and it wasn’t fair. No one cared. And then the gods laughed as more and more news outlets shuttered. More and more Journos lost their voices and the high status they had attained by lying to their fellow man. They were forevermore condemned to traverse the world with only the memories of their past, faded glory. They would travel in a world where no one believed them. No one cared that they had no skills to make an income, that none of the friends they had carefully cultivated were just as beaten down as they. No one believed them. 

Nemesis and mankind were satisfied.