COMMENT | This is the true story, kisah benar, of how the 32nd president of the USA, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, squandered his political capital in a failed attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court with his nominees to ensure its decisions were slanted in his favour.

But first, a sober reminder. We belong to the larger family of “great apes”, which also includes the gorilla, chimp, bonobo, and the orangutan.

And like all members of this larger family, we humans also first communicated with each other in a heady mix of grunts, growls, groans, gestures, and grimaces.

On this matter, we must hear out Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist who studies these great apes other than ourselves: “From a young alpha male to a 60-year-old grandma, these animals are gesturing all day. There is a constant back and forth between them. It is how they run their lives.”

To date, she has catalogued over 150 specific gestures in “The Great Ape Dictionary”. In short, what we humans do with language, these apes do with gestures...