There is a well-known anti-democratic metaphor that compares democracy to two wolves and a sheep sitting down to decide who to have for dinner. This has no realistic parallel in any democracy where most of the electors have very limited power; that puts the sheep in the majority and the wolves in the minority, subverting the metaphor.
Let's consider a marginally less unrealistic metaphor. The shepherds (and even some of their sheep-dogs) routinely dress in sheepskin – potentially even still with the fur on, to make themselves look as much as possible like sheep to the sheep – in order to have the sheep feel comfortable with them and do their bidding, despite how many of the sheep are being eaten by wolves. The shepherds secretly have a deal with the wolves to let the wolves take all the sheep they like, just as long as they leave some meat for the shepherds and their sheep-dogs, plus the hides they need for their disguises. So the shepherds get to fleece the sheep and eat their offal, while the wolves live high on the best of their flesh and the shepherds keep the sheep in line by warning them that if they don't do as the shepherds say the wolves will get you.
Meanwhile, the shepherds fails to protect the sheep. They've cut back on how many sheep-dogs they're employing, most of those they are employing are in fact wolves and the few that aren't know perfectly well that they'll get a ready welcome into the wolf-pack, if they ever leave the shepherd's employ, as long as they've consistently failed to protect sheep from wolves.
The shepherds originally agreed to the deal because the wolves promised to ensure they left enough of the sheep alive to keep a population going, so that the shepherds' fleecing of them, plus the wolves' leavings, would leave the shepherds nicely off. But once the shepherds had, in support of that deal, given up on any means to defend their sheep from the wolves, the wolves grew more bold until the shepherds had to accept that the sheep were barel surviving, albeit just enough to keep the system going. By which time the sheep were too weak to fight back, the shepherds were too scared of the wolf-loyal sheep-dogs and too dependent on the wolves' leavings to argue, so the small number of wolves continued getting what they wanted and everyone else regretted the situation.
A vast flock of sheep let themselves be kept where the wolves and shepherds want them – out of fear of the wolves, from which the shepherds promise (but fail) to protect them – while the shepherds fleece the sheep and the wolves do as they please.
Metaphors are not a good way to make sense of the world, if only because they work by the rules of Story, not those of the real world. But a simple story can be seductive and that makes it easy for a metaphor to mislead. It may help to have a counter-metaphor to use as counter-story, but the only real cure for this is to stop trusting metaphors. They always end up strained, after all.
Written by Eddy.