Do these stories say red, white and blue?
USA TODAY reporters retrace iconic American journeys for the nation’s 250th and what they found says a lot about who we are now.
Noted documentarian Ken Burns said in a recent interview that tendencies to gloss over the bloody reality of American history amplifies perceived divisions of the present moment, but that these echoes of the past paint a more holistic and honest portrait of the nation’s present and future.
Burns made the comments while discussing his documentary about the American Revolution during a July 5 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker.
Here’s what you should know about the historical filmmaker’s take on our present moment, and what he hopes for America’s future.
Burns on the bloody reality and deep divisions of America’s past
According to Burns, history books and our collective memory have a tendency to “sanitize” the American Revolution.
“I think it’s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in ’76 and then 11 years later in ’87, when they do the Constitution,” Burns told Welker. “It doesn’t. Those ideas are made even more impressive because of the improbability of the struggle, the odds against success.”
Burns said that a continent-wide pandemic, a debate over vaccinating soldiers and a failed invasion of Canada during the founding of the United States all “rhyme” with the current moment. But when taken together, our present divisions pale in comparison to the historical record.
“We are really divided,” Burns said, “but we were way more divided then, way more divided during the Civil War, way more divided during the Vietnam period.”
He described the divisions of today as a “mile wide but an inch thick,” adding, “it takes a good story to remind people of the things that we share in common.”
Authoritarianism and the founders
Burns argued that the founders would be “abjectly disappointed” in what some consider the nation’s increasing authoritarian bent, but that they likely wouldn’t be surprised by it.
“I think if the founders came here, they would not be surprised at all that somebody was seeking more authoritarian power,” Burns said. “They would be abjectly disappointed that Article I, the legislative branch, had abdicated so much of the power, because that’s what they thought would be the bulwark against the inevitable thing.”
Burns also argued that a lot of the current unhappiness and division in the U.S. is the fault of “people who are keeping us alive to our grievances.”
“It is in the interests of authoritarians to keep people uneducated, distracted by conspiracy and superstition,” he said.
The “recipe” for a healthy, functioning and relatively peaceful democracy is there, Burns said, but the nation has “been distracted by the shiny objects of superstition and conspiracy and us versus them.”
The power of the ‘citizen’
Prior to the founding of the U.S., Burns said, the idea of a “citizen” as we know it today didn’t exist. Rather, society was divided up into rulers and subjects. As such, the nation’s founding had “biblical” implications steeped in the notion that all people are created equal and are masters of their own destiny.
He cited Thomas Paine, who argued in his seminal work, “Common Sense,” that “Not since the time of Noah do we have a chance to remake the world.”
“So there is a biblical sense of our destiny of creating a place where human beings can reset and say, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ They’re not self-evident. They’ve never been tried. But this is what we’re going to try,” Burns said.
Burns described the role of the citizen as the “highest office in the land,” a deliberate choice that the founders carved out to diminish the power of authoritarians and those who choose violence.
“We have a system here in which we have at least the recipe to pull out the fuel rods of anger and distrust and hatred,” Burns said. “The question is for Americans right now, as we approach this glorious moment, 250 years, the oldest democracy on Earth: ‘Do you want to continue to cook with that recipe, or do you — can you be, as authoritarians always do, convincing you it’s better if everything’s ordered or that our story is only one people and not other people?'”
A chance to reconcile divisions
At the end of the day, Burns said, the American story is a story of an “unbelievably wide variety of people who improbably come together,” and that collectively, we have the power to choose unity over violence.
“We have a chance to sort of reconcile this. And why not take the path of reconciliation rather than the drama, the needless drama of further disunion, and dissipation and violence perhaps? And you just — we don’t need to choose it,” Burns said.
Drew Pittock covers national trending news for USA TODAY. He can be reached at [email protected].
