Mythologies have continuously been believed and promoted to variable degrees in human societies. They reflect our ignorance, our insecurities, our hopes, and our imaginations. They are distinctly interwoven into our religions and the more prosaic aspects of our lives. In the long run, they say more about our imaginations than anything else which they may appear to be addressing.
For me, few myths seem to come close to reflecting the current effects of human interactions upon this planet as does the myth of the Basilisks.
So, what is a Basilisk?
Going back, at least to the time of Pliny’s attempt to catalogue the natural world (1st Century A.D.) and well into the European “Renaissance,” there were reports of a few very toxic creatures which were part serpent and part rooster-like. They were said to be so toxic that if you were to even make eye contact, you would die. Their breath was deadly and almost all vegetation with which they came into contact would immediately wither and die. The Basilisks were said to be the kings of all serpents and had marks on their foreheads and growths on their heads which looked like a crown. The only creatures which were said to be capable of destroying these monsters were weasels. The myth specifically claimed it was the stench of weasel urine which was deadly to the basilisks (and also to the weasel).
There is reason to believe the myth of the basilisk was created through rumors about the deadliness of cobras and the fact that Mongooses (a type of weasel) could kill the cobras. The deadly breath and the ability to kill through eye contact is probably derived from the fact that there are cobras which will spit venom from some distance into the eyes of their prey.
The only other chance for humans to destroy a basilisk was through the use of something reflective – something which causes the monster to see itself within its own deadly gaze.
All of these characteristics speak to/reflect the effects and necessary counter effects of the current devout religiosity toward the myth of capitalizing, corporatist, militarized imperialistic supremacy (and its attendant ignorance and delusions of grandeur). The so-called “free” market capitalized monstrousness cannot be disassociated from its inherent scorched earth policy.
Rather than exposing the infuriated and indignant mongooses to the toxicity of their own urine in order to reduce the numbers of basilisks, the only humane way to proceed toward a world where the mythic corporatized monstrosity and its drone-ified militarism can be curtailed from raining down its venom and poisoning the very air we all breathe is for us to distribute mirrors in an effort to turn the beasts against themselves.
The most effective distributors of mirrors in recent times – Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – have been captured and imprisoned by the servants of the basilisks. The basilisks’ servants steal the future from us all in order to hide themselves beneath and behind the deadly vision of their corporatized monstrosities. They are the democrats, republicans, and their allied privatizing, militarizing corporatists around the planet. Most of the media has been captured and is merely a messaging agent for the basilisks. They spread their mythic lies of security through a gospel which says that freedom, democracy, the environment, and justice are dependent upon desperately avaricious indifference and prideful misrepresentations. They lack any real vision beyond their self-serving use of words to deceive their victims and their versions of reality devolve from willful blindness to their own hypocrisy. They abandon integrity for a disguising posture which they then subsequently also abandon as quickly as is required by their basilisk masters. They are so pathetic in their institutionalized corporate decadent dependence that, at best, they can only suspect that honest reflection is a form of terrorism.
You cannot be in two places at one time. Either you are using reflection to stand against the scorching desolation and toxicity attendant to these monstrosities or you are living in subservience and a fearful, mythic delusion wherein you believe the cynicism of guaranteeing the expansion of Hellishness will sanctify a demonic, predatory economic system.
The actions of the past year and a half have blatantly shown that the frauds who call themselves “progressive democrats” are liars who abandon every one of their previously promoted plans when the basilisks which own their party tell them they need to be more like the republicans. They are an ever-deviating dangerous myth which rises like a transparent, noxious gas from within the blue side of an ever-spreading containment factory farm which they insistently advertise as Hope Incorporated.
$15.00 dollar an hour minimum wage?
Medicare for All or even a public option?
Build Back Better inseparably tied to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill?
Reduce the corrupt tax cuts?
Hold the corrupt Saudis accountable?
Rejoin the Iran Deal?
Not one more foot of border wall construction?
There is now no question about these electoral gimmicks and there is no question that huge increases in militarized spending and oil drilling permits and the continuing scheming to turn Medicare over to private profiteers have been embraced and expanded way beyond what they pretended to oppose two years ago. Trump would have been especially proud if he could have been anywhere near as effectively corrupt as the democrats in guaranteeing the future of Hellish predatory fraudulence. If the Midas touch turned everything to gold, the Biden-Trump-Obama-Bush touch has similarities to that of the mythic basilisk.
I have no doubt that the basilisks’ “liberal” devotees will hiss that Putin made me write this because we are repeatedly reminded that all the negative effects resulting from the democrats and republicans achievements are Putin’s fault. The planet is burning up, but Mythic projections abound. Obama’s “exceptional” people truly are of mythic proportions!