Active Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids,
an easy cure for what some believe is the solution
to our myriad pains and problems.
When in fact with him you end up re enslaved
with an even bigger problem,
a worse affliction and addiction,
a bigger delusion. James Baldwin would say.
The author and finisher of our national existence,
our national suicide. As Mr.
Lincoln prophesize. Do not be seduced by easy equalization.
There is nothing equal about this equation.
We are at an existential crossroads in our political and
civic lives.
This is a choice that could not be clearer.
If you haven't sat and watched the whole thing and
then rewound it and watched it again,
do yourself a favor, treat yourself.
And as soon as we get off the air,
please do so. Everything that renowned historian Ken Burns had
to say is a precious gift in this moment.
So that was from a commencement address at Brandeis University
on the 19th about a week ago.
It has exploded online since it was so eloquently and
powerfully delivered.
Last weekend. Burns explained why he sees right now this
moment,
as a moment to suspend his long standing commitment and
attempt at neutrality.
He implored those new graduates to remember that the most
important political office is that of a private citizen.
Vote, he said, urging them to deliver our nation from
the other route which threatens to engulf and destroy us.
Joining us right now. Yeah.
For mentioned Emmy award-winning filmmaker and documentarian Ken Burns.
I have your copy as you delivered it.
I want to. I want,
I told you yesterday when I emailed you,
I want I want to read the whole thing.
And we'll try to do that.
But first, tell me about this internal tussle about breaking
your bowel of neutrality.
I've been making films about American history.
I have no interest in talking to one particular group
or another.
I'm interested in talking to all citizens.
I have no interest in sort of polishing whatever political
apple I might be attracted to at a particular time.
I'm interested in telling true,
honest, complicated stories. It's unafraid,
as I said, in the speech of controversy and tragedy,
but equally drawn to those moments that suggest an abiding
faith in the human spirit,
and particularly what this American experiment has been about in
good and bad ways.
And every once in a while,
though, you sort of feel in your gut from having
experienced all of this undertow
what the stakes are, and the stakes now are as
high as they could possibly be.
It's an existential moment, as I said,
and it is something that we have to pay attention
to.
And unfortunately, we are so
preoccupied with argument or dialectically preoccupied with one thing or
the other,
and we forget that we have to step back a
lot of times.
The despots know this, right?
They've always known this. They don't respect the judicial system,
so they can play both sides of it.
We're still bound by codes of honour and say we
turn it into a handicap.
And in so doing we cede a little bit of
power to those despots.
Remember when we started our country?
We're the only place on earth that said you would
be
a citizen, not a subject,
didn't apply to everybody, not you,
not black people, not recent immigrants.
But it, it, it was the beginning.
It was the foot in the door of this aspirational
experiment that's been going on for
249 years. And we need to actually
sort of remember what that's about.
You know, Thomas Paine says this wonderful thing
that mankind discovers that the strength and power of despotism
consists wholly in the fear of resisting it.
And that's that's where I got called.
I just finally I have to say something
and and speak directly. I still don't think I made
a a choice to be for one thing or the
other.
I was for us. That's what I was trying to.
I mean, and I guess this is my question.
The other route hasn't worked.
And you seem to indict the binary,
right. RedState, blue state. And it had an echo to
President Obama's convention speech,
right. We don't live in red America or blue America.
There's one America. Was that on your mind?
Things that have broken through?
Yeah, I think that's what it is.
It's it to me, it's very spiritual and it's ancient.
It's Old Testament. It's Ecclesiastes,
which I was doing, that we forget that when we
engage in this argument,
it's always one thing or another.
And what we know from our lives,
our relationships, our children, our work,
is that things are really complicated.
There's undertow, there's confusion, there's consternation that we have at
opposites,
and we have to honor that.
And I think we go into this saying,
oh, it's just an easy thing.
I think we've failed as media that we've,
we, we were, you know,
eight years ago, we had our cameras parked at the
airplane hangar where he was going to arrive because we
knew it was going to be a good train wreck.
We knew it was going to be if it bleeds,
it leads. We knew it was going to be dramatic.
And we've set up this kind of equivalency.
So we have not invested the time in,
say, for example, the accomplishments of the Biden administration.
That is to say, given that equal time total,
you know, and we haven't said this may be the
third most accomplished legislative
accomplishments in 100 years. Obviously FDR and LBJ are a
little bit ahead,
but this may be that.
And so we have to.
Yes. And, and Obama is really strong at understanding that
it's not just this argument.
It's sometimes superseded by a reconciling force,
which we have to bring at this moment.
Yeah, This is not a question of Democrats or Republican.
No, this is the survival of our Republic,
if you like, despots, dictators on day one.
There's not a dictator who's ever
given up power willingly. Well,
I mean, the first page of On Tyranny is about
that idea,
right? Tim Snyder writes about the authoritarian waiting for what
you give up freely.
That's right. And what's what,
what felt so stirring. And,
and I think the reason it's,
I mean, people are writing paragraphs on city streets with
chalk.
It is really, really, really,
really hard to give a commencement address right now.
One, because young people are so much smarter than we
are.
And two, because they're feeling the,
the, the pain of every and the stripe of everything
going on.
But you take that on and it's not Israel or
Palestine.
It's not red or blue,
it's not black. I mean,
just tell me what your advice is for people that
want to get this right.
So this is it. And I,
I realized people said, oh,
you're not going to talk about Israel and Palestine said,
of course I am. Of course.
How can you possibly ignore this
800 LB gorilla in the room,
just as you can ignore the presumptive,
you know, four time indicted
Republican guerrilla in the room?
Exactly. And So what I was trying to say is
that look,
you have 3 great religions.
They're all children of Abraham.
They all believe in the sanctity of human life.
They all have a claim to this land and they
have turned it shamefully into a perpetual graveyard.
And I just said God does not distinguish between the
dead.
And then you take the onus.
Well, I'm for this, okay,
Nobody likes oppression of in any form.
Well, I'm for that. And you and and you realize
that you need we have to find a way to
set aside these impulses.
Oh, well, Joe Biden isn't handling who has been able
to handle this ever.
And therefore I'm not voting for,
I'm withholding my vote out of some sort of protest.
And I said, look, however flawed
you may feel this Republic is right now,
there's no choice. If you like America,
and I would say this to a hog farmer,
a Republican hog farmer in Iowa or a Montana,
you know, wheat farmer or a
mechanic in Alabama. These are people that are invested in
the American dream.
And if you think despotism is going to stop with
just 15,000,000
immigrants that you're going to get rid of or your
political enemies,
it doesn't end anywhere. And today there's an article about
the Stasi files about to be even more stuff released
where
so many hundreds of thousands of German East German citizens
were ratting on their neighbors.
That's what you want.