Choosing Democracy Over Delusion

Documentarian Ken Burns tells graduating Brandeis students that the choice this November could not be clearer

Video screenshot of Ken Burns addressing Brandeis University graduates on May 19, 2024.

Iconic documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has always prided himself on his neutrality and dedication to producing films that appeal to a wide general audience: The Civil War, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, The Statue of Liberty, Lewis & Clark, Baseball. But in a commencement address at Brandeis University two weeks ago, Burns made it clear to the newly minted alums that this moment in our history demands something different from him—and all of us.

“For nearly 50 years now,” Burns said, “I have diligently practiced and rigorously tried to maintain a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding advocacy if I could, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens.”

This way of thinking and working is consonant with his belief in the danger of “us vs. them” binary thinking because the world is more complex, contradictory, full of nuance and subtlety, and not simply reducible to what he called “unreconciled opposites.” That way of thinking, “that preoccupation,” Burns told the graduates, “is imprisoning.”

He went on: “If I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there's a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self-imprisonment.”

But then Burns shifted. “This brings me to a moment I've dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality,” he said ominously.

In the 165 words that I want to share with you now—that I hope you will linger on, read more than once and share with others—Burns lays out his view of what this moment in America’s history demands:

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, ‘The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.’

The presumptive 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 prophesies.

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.

Yesterday, twelve jurors found Donald J. Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, based on the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt. It was a moment to celebrate the survival of the rule of law and the principle that no one is above the law.

On July 11, we will learn what the exceedingly reasonable Judge Juan Merchan determines is the appropriate sentencing for this convicted felon, whose remorselessness, hostility and disdain for our system of justice and all those involved has been on full and appalling display.

But yesterday we also already saw a parade of Republican enablers kowtowing to the convicted felon and betraying their country by attacking the law and the legal process in an attempt to delegitimize our judicial system. These are not minor players but top elected officials such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senators Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz, as well as other members of the House and Senate.

I will dig into the deplorable words they spewed on another day, but suffice to say their knee-jerk attacks make me gravely doubt whether the cleave in our country can be mended. It makes me wonder if these are the feelings that Unionists felt when Confederates seceded from the United States.

As Ken Burns suggests, these are not times for neutrality, even if that mindset is your natural instinct and approach to life. “We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives,” Burns told the young people at Brandeis, looking ahead to the future. “This is a choice that could not be clearer.”

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