Whole Being: Life Alchemy
Being, Belonging, Becoming
The Sheep Show and the False Shepherd
Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Feast your eyes on the greatest spectacle of our age, the Sheep Show! A swirling, baa-ing mass of humanity, hooves clicking on the hard pavement of social media echo chambers, noses pointed in the direction of the loudest voice. This isn’t just any flock; no, these are the hand-sheared, brainwashed, premium-grade followers of a false shepherd who doesn’t just pull the wool over their eyes, he turns it into a designer fleece and sells it back to them.
Look closely, and you’ll see the truth. He’s a false shepherd, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, disgusted by the very sheep that worship him. Their low-class bleating embarrasses him. Their unwavering devotion, while useful, grates on him. But the sheep have one job: to cheer his name, to follow blindly, to fall into his carefully engineered traps. He doesn’t need them to think; in fact, he’d rather they didn’t. He loves the “poorly educated”. He doesn’t care if they fall into traps, if they’re shorn bare in the process. He’s no good shepherd protecting his flock. He’s a showman, a performer who loves the stage but despises the audience. Their adoration fuels him, but their existence embarrasses him.
Take, for instance, the TikTok Tango, a masterclass in manipulation. The stage is set: the TikTok CEO, Shou Chew, will be in the audience at the grand inauguration. The false shepherd, not yet crowned again but already claiming the throne, takes credit for saving TikTok. The details? Oh, they matter. Biden is still president, but Trump wants his sheep to believe he is already in control.
Here’s the trick: TikTok preemptively shuts itself off, days before it’s required to, a self-imposed exile. A ban looms, tied to Republican theatrics in Congress. But before anyone can enforce it, TikTok flips the switch just in time for the false wolfy shepherd to flip it back on. And there he stands, basking in the spotlight, saying, “Look at what I did. I saved TikTok!” The sheep roar their approval, unaware, or unwilling to see, that the ban wasn’t necessary in the first place. It’s a show, well-rehearsed and perfectly timed, like a magician pulling a rabbit from an empty hat.
Details matter. Watch and see. Biden never asked for TikTok to shut down. The entire performance was engineered to trick the sheep into believing their shepherd worked a miracle. But miracles don’t smell like this.—I can smell Russia from here.
The wolf in disguise learned well from the masters of disinformation. In Russia, this kind of psychological sleight of hand is called informatsionnoe protivoborstvo, information confrontation. The goal isn’t just to spread lies; it’s to erode the very concept of truth. The sheep don’t question the slant of the stage, the tilt of the platform. They don’t notice the strings, the carefully placed mirrors. They see only what the shepherd tells them to see.
Consider another act in the Sheep Show: Israel. Cease-fire negotiations brokered by the Biden administration with Trump’s man tagging along like an understudy in a community theater production. When the dust settled and peace held, Trump emerged like a sideshow barker: “Look what I did! Tremendous! Tremendous!” The sheep applauded. They didn’t notice the stagehands cleaning up the confetti Biden had already thrown.
But this is the brilliance of the Sheep Show. Truth becomes an accessory, a bauble dangled in front of a crowd desperate to believe. Meanwhile, those of us in the cheap seats, the Watchers, we know better. We document the spectacle for history. We see the sleight of hand, the tilt of the stage, the whispers in the wings.
We are not all sheep. Some of us are watchers. We see the tricks for what they are. We write the truth down for history, even as the false shepherd spins his illusions. We smell the manipulation, the half-truths, the cynical ploys to grab credit and power.
Let’s not pretend the sheep are only on one side of the pasture, though. The slant cuts both ways. Tribalism doesn’t care if your banner is red or blue, it thrives on blind allegiance. The Russian trap isn’t just about whose sheep are easiest to herd; it’s about convincing everyone the wolves are on the other side. Truth becomes secondary. Baa-baa-baa, they all bleat, rushing toward the next fabricated crisis.
So beware of the pull of the false shepherd’s crook. Beware the promise that someone else will think for you, research for you, decide for you. Sheep stumble into traps; Watchers spot them from miles away. Seek the facts, not the slant. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Refuse to follow the herd off the cliff, even when the fall is cushioned by the lies of your choosing.
The Sheep Show rages on. But here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: we don’t have to buy a ticket. The watchers write the history. The sheep? They’ll just be shorn. Beware the sheep show, where the biggest trick of all is convincing you it’s not a trick at all.
