About that whole "#wolf - #sheep - #sheepdog" thing.
Certain men (almost always) like to think of themselves as #guardians of the flock. The night is dark and full of terrors. They and they alone stand between the innocent sheep, going about their daily business doing sheep things, and the ravening wolves who always lurk in the brush waiting to strike. Let the sheep be happy in their naivete: the sheepdogs are on guard!
I get it, I really do.
When I was a very young man—a boy, really, although I'd have bristled at that word at the time—I raised my right hand and swore an #oath to support and defend the #Constitution and #America and Mom's apple pie against the commie hordes, and damn, I felt good about myself. Honestly, I still do, although I'm not nearly so self-important these days. (Er, I hope.) That oath, and everything that followed from it, did a whole lot to shape who I became, and still am.
No matter how much of a strut that put in my step, I never once would have thought to describe my service with a metaphor that cast me as a different species from the people I swore to defend. My family, my friends, my community, my country: they were *people*, just like me. That was kind of the whole point. For that matter, so were whatever enemies I was defending against.
That's not what bothers me the most about the "sheepdog" thing, though. The much bigger and more immediate problem is what sheepdogs actually do.
See, sheepdogs don't just guard the flock. They also control the flock, a lot more often than they defend it. They *herd* the flock, and any sheep who don't do what the sheepdog wants it to do gets nipped.
Are you comfortable with human societies working that way? Because I'm sure as hell not.
People who convince themselves that their purpose in life is to protect others, who make that the basis of their identities, inevitably end up trying to take control. And when those others reject that control, they react ... badly. They become the thing the "sheep" need to protect *against*.
They're not wolves, or sheep, or dogs. They're just miserable excuses for human beings.
