Hardly. Equivalently, hyenas as are like private equity firms. They're looters and scavengers. They create inequality and terror. Scar's regime fell because of them, not despite their best efforts to govern.

They're not misunderstood. At all. Except by Rex Kerr, apparently.

And let's not forget about those worms.

If the four horsemen of the apocalypse were reimagined as African predators, hyenas would be pestilence and boils.

Your essay was kind of funny, but you had to have been snockered or high on weed when you wrote it. Fess up.

It's kind of interesring though, in that as it happens, over the weekend, I finally finished the last season of Walking Dead (I'm behind, I know) which dealt with the same sort of questions about political structures a great deal and finally answered the question about who the walking dead are and who they are not.

Outside of the silliness, you really missed the mark here, in the interpretation of the movie and laid out the dynamics poorly.

Even in portraying herbivores as innocents being pressed into worshiping the king. Plants scream when they're injured, you know. Do you think plants would expend so much effort attempting to evolve defensive capabilities against being eaten if the herbivores were so innocent?