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Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Ken Burns: "The Choice Could Not Be Clearer"

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1838

Forsaking his customary neutrality, renowned filmmaker Ken Burns (finally looking his age at 70) gave the commencement address at Brandeis University last week, a warning and a clarion call:


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2 comments:

Frank said...

Burns is brilliant in so many respects. I also saw him in an interview (I think it was on NBC or MSNBC or CNN) on YouTube. There is an awful lot of what he said to digest and contemplate.

But I am left with the dilemma of, in his words: "But it's clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everything is either right or wrong, red state or blue state, young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, Palestinian or Israeli, my way or the highway." and the seeming contradiction, also in his words: "There is no real choice this November...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."

I am not optimistic about any possibility of unifying this country at this point in time and history. It has become so "us" and "them" the sides so diametrically opposite. It is truly an existential crossroads, but with no clear or graceful resolution even if there is no real choice. I see a real possibility of turmoil and violence no matter which "side" wins.

P.S. I'm not sure that the advice to "make babies" is necessarily wise in this over-populated world where humans are consuming the earth and its resources faster than they can be replenished.

May 29, 2024 at 8:07 AM
Russ Manley said...

Thanks for your very thoughtful comment, buddy.

I noticed the contradiction in Burns's speech, too. The phrase "there is no real choice" this November is poorly worded. The choice is, as he does say, very clear: between the continuance of American democracy and the rule of law, as we have always understood those things, albeit with a flawed and fumbling President at its head and a too-often deadlocked Congress; OR submission to an explicit dictatorship under a flagrantly ignorant narcissist and his fanatical fascist followers, who will destroy democracy, the rule of law, and human rights under a theocracy.

All halfway intelligent people see this horror approaching, but what can we do to stop it? Like you, I see no happy outcome. But I keep hoping and praying that somehow good sense and humanity will prevail. Pete Buttigieg is the only intelligent, competent, clear-headed politician on the national scene that impresses me - he's a bit inexperienced to be President just yet, and he would need a widespread base of support to turn things around. But he's a good man, and I hope other good men and women will find a way out of this ungodly dilemma somehow, some way.

I used to wonder as a kid how the Nazis could take over a great nation like Germany. Now I understand. Very, very scary. I hope I don't live to see a civil war or the advent of the Fascist States of America.

Yeats:
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold . . .
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

May 30, 2024 at 7:23 PM

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