[Magdalen] An educational day

[Ann Markle]

The exposition on Trump was interesting, Roger, though since I'm an
addictive commentary-watcher, I've heard these points made before.  On the
other hand, the other two -- especially the second -- caught my attention,
because these are the kinds of things I love -- having my brain
"inadvertently" stimulated by things I might otherwise never think much
about -- wild animal poaching, for example.  It's one reason I love things
like the TED Talks, Charlie Rose, and the email I get weekly from "Brain
Pickings."  I never know what sorts of insights I'll get, and they often
tend to enrich my ponderings about my own areas of interest (Jung, Black
Madonna, Cultural Studies, etc.).  Thanks for this.

Ann

The Rev. Ann Markle
Buffalo, NY
ann.markle at aya.yale.edu

On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 5:28 PM, Roger Stokes <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com>
wrote:

> Each year my alma mater (Clare College, Cambridge) has a Gala Day. For one
> reason or another I haven't been before but I did this year and heard three
> informative lectures as a result. The first was on "Elizabeth I - Age, Sex
> and the Virgin Queen". The lecturer pointed out that Elizabeth was
> determined from an early age never to marry as to do so would mean always
> being subservient to her husband. Even when she came to the throne her male
> courtiers continued to pull the strings until she was 50, hence menopausal
> and so never going to bear the son they wanted to continue the Protestant
> monarchy. Even though her half-sister Mary had been Queen in her own right
> it was her husband, Philip II of Spain, who effectively ruled the country.
> About this time Elizabeth managed to belittle her senior courtiers and so
> exercise her rightful authority.
>
> The title of the second talk, "Racehorses to Rhinos", did not sound
> promising but was very interesting. Little time was spent on horses (beyond
> the phenomenal fees a quality stallion can get for covering mares) which
> was her first responsibility on qualifying. Much more time was spent
> talking about what is clearly her real love, working with wild animals
> which are under threat and helping with breeding programmes. Each year she
> takes students to South Africa where they are trained and work at the Game
> Capture School in Anakala but also at Sanctuaries in Shamvari and Addo as
> well as the aquatic animals near Port Elizabeth. Her main concern is
> clearly to reverse the sharp rise (100 fold) there has been in rhino
> poaching to get their horns to sell for use in China in particular by a
> combination of approaches. As she observed the sentences passed on poachers
> that are caught are not a real deterrent and what needs to happen is to cut
> off the demand in China, where they have enlisted a popular sportsman to
> help promote the cause.
>
> After lunch came the talk that attracted most interest. The lecture
> theatre was almost full for "President Trump: A Preliminary Assessment of
> His Place in History". The lecturer started by admitting that last Summer
> he had told his students Trump could not secure the nomination, and then in
> October and the first week of November that he could not possibly win the
> General Election. He sees Trump as the first truly populist President, but
> one who had built his success on the efforts of McCarthy, Wallace, Buchanan
> and Perot. All of them had a popular appeal that transcended the
> traditional party loyalties. He said that Trump owed more to Nixon who was
> an active witch-hunter in his approach and the Southern strategy and the
> redefining of what class meant. Henceforth it would be the elite and the
> common person.
>
> Having his projections twice proved wrong last year he was not happy
> (though the audience reaction suggested they were) when I asked "Given that
> history and experience show we don't learn from history and experience what
> should we learn from what has happened?". He lamented the tone of what now
> passes for political debate in the USA and thought that Trump is a poison
> pill for the Republican Party, leading it in the wrong direction. Rather
> than engaging the issues he tends to set up a straw man to knock down and
> is too erratic to have any consistent foreign policy. However he drew a
> parallel with McCarthy whose popularity waned sharply when he criticised
> the Army and thought that Trump's fortunes would ebb away if he did
> something that harms his base, the healthcare proposals being a possible
> area for conflict. Depriving the white working class to whom he appeals of
> their insurance (or putting the cost up sharply) and cutting the reach of
> Medicaid would not be popular. That could be his undoing.
>
> Roger
>
>