The Three Pigs: a modern fairy tale

Once upon a time there were three pigs. (They had convinced a few folks that they were sheepdogs, but really, they were pigs.)

Because some folks thought they were sheepdogs, these three pigs had managed to get a sweet gig keeping watch over sheep. They were supposed to treat all the sheep fairly and honestly, but these three pigs happened to like white sheep more than black sheep. And so, one day while they were all hanging out at the donut shop, they decided to have some fun and build a few structures to allow them to take care of the sheep the way they liked.

The first pig got a whole lot of straw. He built a big scary-looking black sheep out of it, which he put on display. This black sheep, he argued, was naturally criminal, lazy, stupid, more likely to fight and harm his own as well as others. He and his brothers had no choice but to crack down on these sheep for the good of the whole community. After a while, he used this straw-sheep argument to convince many in the community that he was right.

The second pig got a whole lot of sticks. Sticks are useful tools. You can use them to beat down anyone who gets in your way, even little black lambs who carry toy sticks in public places. And if you bind the sticks together in a bundle, you can make a very useful tool called a "fasces." This fascist pig used his bundle of sticks to corral black sheep so that they didn't get to go places he didn't want them to go. He could even build little pens and keep the non-white sheep in there for as long as he wanted. The second pig got very, very good at stick-ing it to the black sheep whenever and wherever he liked.

The third pig got a whole lot of stones. He knew that for his brothers' structures to work, they would need one big structure to keep everything in place. And so he built a huge stone wall for the pigs to hide behind any time the sheep complained to the shepherd that they were being unfairly treated. As long as the pigs stayed silent behind the wall, the shepherd couldn't act to stop them. Stone-walling was probably the best and most useful structure of all for the pigs.

This went on for some time, until one day the pigs got caught on camera, stick-ing it to another black sheep. When all the sheep, black and white alike, saw this, they were angry and decided to protest against the pigs' mistreatment of some sheep. They wanted the pigs to know and respect that black sheep mattered. Little did they know that some wolves, dressed in sheep's clothing, had joined the protest and started breaking and destroying and looting things.

The pigs were furious. Since they weren't really sheepdogs, they couldn't tell the sheep and the wolves apart, so they just started stick-ing it to everyone. But the more angry and violent they became, the more upset the sheep got and the more protests started to spring up. Pretty soon there were too many protests for the pigs to beat down with their sticks. And the stone-walling they were used to doing didn't seem to be working that well.

The sheep decided they had to do something to beat the pigs at their game. So they asked the shepherd to make some new laws taking away the source of the pigs' fun: the straw, the sticks and the stones. The sheep figured that if they de-funned the pigs, they wouldn't be able to mistreat the sheep any more.

Meanwhile the wolves in sheep's clothing were still doing damage and making a mess, and the pigs did nothing to stop it because they were too worried about being de-funned.

So, now the shepherd has given you a chance to vote against the pigs. The pigs keep telling you they'll protect you against the wolves, but is that really what they're doing with the resources at their disposal? Are the structures they have created benefiting us or them? Do they even know how to tell the wolves from the sheep? Have they learned anything at all from this experience?

Or is it time to de-fun the pigs?

You ask me, it's time to yeet those pigs into next week.