Ken Burns’ Urgent Warning: Why He’s Scared For America’s Future
variety.comVariety on a chilly January afternoon, is terrifying. After all, Burns knows of what he speaks. Over four decades and 40 documentaries, he has made the American experience his great artistic endeavor.
He’s chronicled the construction of civic wonders like the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the creation and popularization of distinctly American art forms and pastimes such as jazz and baseball.
And he’s also memorialized those periods when the fabric of the country threatened to be torn apart, moments of civil war and revolution, of tribalism and racism that have left many people listening not to the better angels of their nature but to far darker spirits.
To Burns, America in 2022, teetering under the weight of propaganda and plague, is facing stark choices that will determine if it remains true to its foundational belief that “all men are created equal” or succumbs to political polarization and dysfunction.“America is facing the greatest threat it ever has — period, full stop,” Burns says. “COVID and the unique set of political problems we are dealing with have made it the fourth great crisis.
Read more on variety.com
