One of my favorite things about the English language is the naming of pluralities of animals. I first became acquainted with these oddities of articulation the same way many of you fellow high culture snobs probably did. Through that masterpiece of television cinema, One Tree Hill. In the show, the requisite moody intellectual, who also happens to be a surreptitious basketball superstar with one of the worst jumpshot forms ever to be aired repetitively on screen. (Like the naming of groups of animals is to language, the athletic form of actors is another oddity entered into the cultural zeitgeist. They can cry on cam, but they cannot throw a football. My favorite examples here and here.)
The intellectual dreams of writing a book, and he does. He calls it “An Unkindness of Ravens”. Alas, we discover that a group of ravens is actually called an unkindness. A group of crows is a murder. Into the rabbit hole we go. In that rabbit hole is a group of rabbits, a warren, a colony of them.
That old children’s toy with the red monkeys in a barrel is so named because a group of monkeys is, in fact, a barrel.
It gets better. A prickle of porcupines. A rhumba of rattlesnakes. A mischief of rats. A business of ferrets.
Endless enjoyment should ensure if you are a lover of language.
I tried to find out where this trend came from. No one is really sure, and there are old almanacs that include these strange names in their recordings of earlier forms of the words we use. But the question of why is up for debate.
But to me at least, the why is not as important as the implied meaning of the practice. For the most part, the names seem to be a nod to the essence of the group, the feeling it gives one to observe them, to encounter the animals in their glory or lack thereof.
In the spirit of the animal kingdom and the oddities of my mother tongue, I think the best way to name those cultural entities made up of the most dangerous primate of all is to call them after their collective non-human counterparts. An essay on word association, if only for myself.
Crash of Rhinoceroses: Establishment Republicans
A little on the nose. But a crash, as in the sound of wars the world over being financed by people who do not have noble motives like their proxies. A crash, like the sound of motives colliding with the interests of big government and big business and big-War. A crash, a cacophony of useless noise that leaves things broken, and a group of people who say the right things but are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Cackle of Hyenas: Comedians on the forefront of culture
If you have been to Africa, on one of those excursions to see the carefully curated wildlife the continent has to offer. I once went on a two-day safari at the end of a mission trip to Kenya at a resort organized by the Masai tribe of warriors. Several things struck me. The sheer bigness of animals I had only seen in pictures. Watching a lion tear away the flesh of their unrecognizable prey. The sound of baboons on top of our resort tent, unrippable canvas set on top of a hardwood floor complete with plumbing. But I also remember the sun setting, and hearing the sound of nonhuman laughter, the kind that amuses and unsettles. The Masai guardsmen of the camp, who wore colorful robes and held spears, either to defend us against lions or to convince us of their veracity and elicit the free expenditure of our mission trip funding, told me that they were hunting. Searching for something alive or dead to eat. As the sun sets on this chapter of our culture, the comedians continue laughing, telling us a truth both unsettling and amusing. But we cannot make the mistake of thinking they are not hunting, whether they recognize it or not. In their cackles is the sound of the moment, the reality of our moment.
Pandemonium of Parrots: Mainstream news media
We have seen the compilation videos of news anchors repeating the same headlines. America used to trust newsmen for several reasons. They gave us the news without spin, or at least acknowledged the spin when they gave it. But in the MSNM’s attempt to consolidate information into one public facing opinion, in the repetition, a chaos has been bred and released. We see repetition as settling, as producing routine and comfort. But in reality, repetition is crazy-making, especially when the repetition is in service of what the most educated, most wealthy, most politically active class of people in our country has deemed suitable for informing (read, control) the masses. Repetition does not lead to the right information, it leads to a lack of it. In a lack of information, there is pandemonium.
Lamentation of Swans: Mainstream cultural figures
I cannot help it that I picture Taylor Swift. I hope she marries the football player and lives happily ever after, forever transcending the bleachers she found herself in many years ago. Godspeed. But she is emblematic of the ever-complaining group of celebrities who feel the need to comment on every fashionable issue, while ignoring the true plights and experiences of the people they play to and for. They cry and thrash, and yet, it is not their incessant dribbling we are after, but the art of sport or music or cinema. The art is, in fact, the point.
Venue of Vultures: Conservative alternative media
“Alternative” is a strange way to refer to those at the Daily Wire or Tucker Carlson’s new enterprise given their popularity. But that is the word that comes to mind. There seems to be this obsession with conservatives over the dead, the parts of our culture that have decayed past life. And conservative media figures with a few exceptions, choose to swoop down on these things and make their meals of them. Ticker praises the dead system that is the Russian and political landscape. Shapiro swoops down on the dead carcass of the culture wars and gender politics. I do not begrudge the vultures, the conservatives. It is their nature to see the dead and reveal its location, to seek to conserve. But it seems to me that just now, we could use a little more life on this side. There are those who kill things, those who point out the dead, and those who raise to life. I hope the vultures will one day find cause to be more lifegiving. This is what the Daily Wire wants with its new entertainment wing, I think. So perhaps the tide is turning, at the conservatives will find themselves transitioning from vultures to doves, a whole dule of them.
Stench of Skunks: Establishment Democrats
No, no, not because they stink. The average democrat is a person trying to navigate the world that has gone bad around them, to find a way to lift others up, trusting their elected officials to do so. I know and love many of them. But their leaders do not serve them, any more than the Crash serves the other side. A skunk when threatened, does not fight first, He sprays the intruder with a concoction of all the evil inside him. The skunk permanently smells this way, and now the intruder, the infidel must also brave the stink just because he deigned to fight. I worry that everything stinks because one side chooses to make it so, to cast the mix of accusations and ad hominems and deadly poison on everyone and everything that poses a threat. How then will the fight that must take place actually occur? Especially when the Crash and Venue and all other groups that form the opposition are often so inept. I guess, for a while, we must all smell like death. At least, until the rest of us vote not to stink, not to be doomed to the crash. Which means…
Pack or Cowardice of Dogs: The rest of us
The dog is the most loyal of creatures. I gaze upon my dearest Frankie, the loveable 75lb doofus who sleeps on my wife’s pillows above her head, and I know there is nothing in her of her wolf ancestors. She barks throatily when she feels threatened, or when she believes us to be, but she turns her belly to the sky when her Pekinese friends nip her at the dog park.
We are loyal to our ideas, our parties, our cultural delusions. So loyal that we refuse to vote our consciences, and worse still to voice our opinions. A group of dogs is often called a pack. This is acceptable in the English language. Wouldn’t it be more accurate most times, to call the group by its other name? If our loyalties prevent us from speaking, we are not loyal, we are slaves. Until we reopen the conversations we were meant to have as people, we will be a cowardice of dogs, relying on our owners for kibble and place to sleep. But should we embrace our nature as people, our innate need to struggle with each other, our government, our rights, our gods, the pack will begin to with and for each other. A paradox really, that in free thinking there is the ability to produce a group dynamic capable of change.
As always, the choice is ours alone.