Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Ken Burns' Speech on America, Social Media, Our Political Future and Donald Trump (Stanford's 125th Commencement Ceremony)





“…[I]t is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. 

“But you would be hard pressed to find – in all of human history – a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government. 

“Part of the reason this kind of criticism sticks is because we live in an age of social media where we are constantly assured that we are all independent free agents. But that free agency is essentially unconnected to real community, divorced from civic engagement, duped into believing in our own lonely primacy by a sophisticated media culture that requires you – no, desperately needs you – to live in an all-consuming disposable present, wearing the right blue jeans, driving the right car, carrying the right handbag, eating at all the right places, blissfully unaware of the historical tides that have brought us to this moment, blissfully uninterested in where those tides might take us.

“Our spurious sovereignty is reinforced and perpetually underscored to our obvious and great comfort, but this kind of existence actually ingrains in us a stultifying sameness that rewards conformity (not courage), ignorance and anti-intellectualism (not critical thinking). This wouldn’t be so bad if we were just wasting our own lives, but this year our political future depends on it. And there comes a time when I – and you – can no longer remain neutral, silent. We must speak up – and speak out. [We must unite and rebel]! For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. 

“One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. 

“I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and – they feel – powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that – as often happens on TV – a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.

“As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. 

“These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.

“We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or ‘balance,’ or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. 

“Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary ‘good behavior.’ It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.

“And do not think that the tragedy in Orlando underscores his points. It does not. We must ‘disenthrall ourselves,’ as Abraham Lincoln said, from the culture of violence and guns. And then ‘we shall save our country.’ This is not a liberal or conservative issue, a red state, blue state divide. This is an American issue. Many honorable people, including the last two Republican presidents, members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, have declined to support him. And I implore those ‘Vichy Republicans’ who have endorsed him to please, please reconsider. We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization and reject the troubling, unfiltered Tourette’s of his tribalism…”


Stanford's 125th Commencement ceremony was held on Sunday, June 12, 2016 in Stanford Stadium. The Commencement speaker was Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker. For the entire speech, click here.


2 comments:

  1. Ken Burns is wrong. He waves the flag and makes Trump a bogeyman. Cruz, Rubio, Ryan, McConnell, Rauner, Scott, Rahm Emanuel (D), Dannel Malloy (D) and many other elected officials are in complete agreement with Trump's issues and platform. Burns is simply playing the part of a patriot who believes that America would be fine with a little tweak or two - or even a vote for Hillary or the Wall St. billionaire who will step in to take Trump's place prior to the election.
    What is the real issue? Corporatism.
    "Our corporate masters know what is coming. They know that as the ecosystem breaks down, as financial dislocations create new global financial meltdowns, as natural resources are poisoned or exhausted, despair will give way to panic and rage."
    "Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, of course, will do nothing to halt the corporate assault. There will be no reform. Totalitarian systems are not rational. There will only be harsher forms of repression and more pervasive systems of indoctrination and propaganda. The voices of dissenters, now marginalized, will be silenced.
    It is time to step outside of the establishment. This means organizing groups, including political parties, that are independent of the corporate political machines that control the Republicans and Democrats."
    Chris Hedges, who knows that Trump is a mere bogeyman, puts it all together as he looks at historical patterns.
    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_must_understand_corporate_power_to_fight_it_20160612

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  2. With today's revelation that Justice Kennedy's son approved a billion dollar loan to a Trump corporation via Deutch Bank when other Banks refused the loan, the thoroughness of the corruption that is America is evident. Kennedy's timed retirement, the extreme profitability of the Clinton Foundation, the role of JB Pritzker as the pro-choice, pro-union, progressive, the Pence-Ryan-McConnell trifecta, the judicial reversal of a jury's decision about the guilt and financial punishment of a Chicago cop who shot a teenager five times in the back, the continued bipartisan attacks on unions and their pension funds, the bipartisan approval of profitable charter schools and voucher programs that profit corporations, the profitable and unjust caging of refugee children by ICE thugs, Nancy Pelosi's dismissal of a social democrat's victory over an entrenched machine Dem, the extreme wealth gained by both Democratic and Republican office holders while being paid modest salaries, and so much more are all signs of a system indifferent implosion of its own country/empire.
    Corruption as government is, by definition, self-destructive. America is destroying Americans on the weekend prior to the Fourth of July. Flag waving is compulsory, kneeling is condemned as we explode fireworks and implode in clouds of smoke and inglorious glory.

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