'A despot': Ken Burns signals danger of 'greatest existential threat' to the US right now
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Documentarian Ken Burns scorches Trump’s Republican Party: 'They’ve now abandoned all admirable mandates — and replaced them with xenophobic rants’
Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose latest documentary focuses on the American Revolutionary War, tells the New York Times that the greatest existential threat to the United States right now is sitting right in the White House.
"Jefferson says a few phrases after pursuit of happiness," Burns says, in reference to the Declaration of Independence. "He says, 'All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable.'"
Burns says that Jefferson was referring to authoritarianism, the acceptance of which, he explains, has been around since the founding of the nation.
"He means that everybody heretofore has been subject to an authoritarian rule, and we’ve basically accepted it. It’s been the want of every authoritarian to make sure that people are uneducated, they’re suspicious, they’re a peasantry, they are subjects," Burns says.
When asked " how you think of just how significant the dangers are?" Burns replied, "the increase in executive power is perhaps the greatest existential threat to the United States right now."
Burns, who has made over 40 award-winning documentaries about all facets of the American experience, says that this concept of authoritarianism is not new to us, but it is an increasing threat.
"The patriots, the rebels, were mainly selecting against a despot, against an authoritarian. They knew human nature. They knew someone would eventually come along like that, and they were trying to figure out how to guard against it," he said.
"Jefferson, writing from Paris to Madison, said: What if someone should lose an election but pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind? They weren’t idiots. They were really smart, and they were trying to guard against exactly that," Burns said.
And while Burns does see the glass half full in terms of where the country is headed, he also says that there is cause for great concern.
"I think that in our democratic — small “d” democratic — DNA is everything we need to right the ship. I am optimistic, though I’ve never been as pessimistic as I am right now," he says.
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