Defensive posturing can’t hide indefensible

ALPACAS are fascinating animals. They’re elegant, they produce beautifully soft fibre and they’re social, needing company to be happy. In some countries they’re used to protect other animals from predators — poultry, sheep and goats from foxes, coyotes and dogs — and they work together to protect themselves. When Civis’ very friendly dog twice got through to a paddock and went to investigate them, each time the five alpacas formed a defensive formation, the biggest facing the dog directly, the next two echeloned back a little on either side, the weakest further back and central (on the second occasion the large but disconcerted dog retreated to the middle of a heap of prunings waiting to be burnt, and barked for rescue). They get worried on seeing young children — when an 8yearold grandson stood at the fence recently they faced him in a shallow V formation.

The alpacas’ defensive formation came to mind early last month, on seeing US President Donald Trump’s medical team come out from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre (it’s ironic that Mr Trump went to a veterans’ hospital, even if he is, officially, the US military’s commanderinchief, given that he dodged the draft using ‘‘heel spurs’’ as an excuse) to report on the president’s progress, after he was admitted with Covid19. There were about a dozen of them, uniformly whitecoated, who formed an open formation, with military precision, behind the president’s personal physician Dr Sean Conley. Only a few spoke. Presumably the rest were there to support the speakers, but against what?

Dr Conley had already admitted lying to the media, so the likelihood of the reporters believing him was minuscule. But the respectable media aren’t known for offering violence, even to liars (and they’ve had lots of practice of listening to lies since Mr Trump’s election). They can’t discipline Dr Conley for lying: that’s the job of his profession.

It was surprising that Mr Trump hadn’t contracted Covid19 earlier, given his refusal to distance, and encouragement of mask refusal. Did he halfbelieve his repeated assurances, despite knowing better from scientific briefings, that illness caused by the Covid19 virus was trivial, milder than ‘‘flu’’? Implicitly contradicting that lie has been another, claiming that the US administration, and he in particular, had been carefully managing the virus and keeping it under control.

That’s par for his presidency, of course. Farragoes of lies, often contradicting themselves, denigration of the media that reports them and apparently complete detachment from reality (let’s not even try to address the corrupt nature of his presidency).

His illness brought those aspects of his presidency, and the effect it has on those in the administration, and in those dealing with him, into sharp focus.

It’s unsurprising that a wife and child caught Covid19 from an infectious husband. But repeated outbreaks among Mr Trump’s team (his chief of staff, maskless and probably infectious during the White House election night party, and five other aides, tested positive last week), and the house staff of the White House (little is heard of them), highlight Mr Trump’s criminally negligent approach to masks and distancing.

The White House political team have themselves to blame. They’ve supported the lies, and mimicked the behaviour, of a president who’s always been dangerous and unpredictable and, postinfection, unsurprisingly, was even more so: as a retired doctor recently pointed out in a letter to the ODT, dexamethasone (used for those with severe Covid19 effects, and given to Mr Trump) can induce ‘‘psychic derangements rang[ing] from euphoria, insomnia, mood swings, personality changes and severe depression to frank psychotic manifestations’’ (sound familiar?).

But the house staff, many of whom are AfricanAmerican or SpanishAmerican, and so at higher risk from Covid19 than the vaguely pinkish, and who’re in close contact with the Trumps, didn’t choose whom they work for.

For them, Mr Trump’s, and his team’s, behaviour could be murderous. They must be longing for January 20 and a sane president.