First of all, there weren’t any dogs or ponies. Second of all, there wasn’t even a show. And no one had a good time.
The audience seemed to be stunned and disappointed, as if thinking, “This is what I came out for?”
They didn’t stop to reflect that they went there willingly. Went there, in fact, so they could be fleeced. Which they would have known had they any self-awareness.
They were the show.
As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, and so it goes.