Ken Burns’s Documentary Deception

Ken Burns has become the most recognized American “historian” in the world.

Documentaries can have that impact. In fact, two thirds of American adults get their history from documentaries.

Books finish far down the list.

This has several implications for the future of American history.

First, Americans in the visual age are duped by the leftist drivel they get from mainstream history sources, including books, but more importantly documentaries. Make no mistake, Burns is a leftist and his work skews in that direction.

Second, those who disagree with Burns or the leftist establishment need to be placing more emphasis on the audio and visual and less on the written word. I started doing this several years ago with my podcast and have not slowed down since.

It doesn’t mean I won’t write more in the future, but for now, writing has taken a back seat to other mediums.

Third, if more Americans are getting their “history” from documentaries or social media (in the top three on the list) then American culture is in peril.

When a vast number of Twitter dopes think Hitler built the Berlin Wall, we have a knowledge problem.

Ain’t democracy grand?

Burns makes slick videos. They are engaging, and bringing Shelby Foote on for his 1990 series on the “Civil War” offered a veil of objectivity, but Burns has since said he regretted doing that.

His subsequent projects have not had the same kind of balance.

Everything is race, class, and gender, the same disease that plagues history curriculum across the United States.

Burn may think he hides his biases, but any politically astute American can pick them up.

Burns was the featured interview for a recent article in Variety magazine. He bashes Donald Trump and thinks that the left is here to preserve American liberty.

These people live in a silo. Burns also thinks we are facing the worst crisis in American history.

It could be if you worship the State and the American empire.

Regardless, a listener asked me to comment on Burns and his work, so that formed the basis of episode 586 of The Brion McClanahan Show.