If Donald Trump wins the presidency this November it appears documentary filmmaker Ken Burns might need to be fitted out for a straitjacket. If you have any doubt of this, then take a look below at the unhinged rant Burns performed during his commencement speech at Stanford University yesterday. Rather than ditching outright partisanship for the day out of respect for the victims of the tragic terrorist attack in Orlando, Burns decided to stick with his prepared speech to declare his crazed obsession about Trump.
The self-proclaimed "yellow dog Democrat" just couldn't give politics a rest yesterday of all days. The speech was also especially egregious in view of the fact that Burns is largely dependent on taxpayer based funding from PBS and he just insulted at least half the people paying for his career. Here is Burns, looking at times like he is about to leap out of his thin skin, as he delivers a political campaign speech disguised as commencement address:
For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements.
Um, Ken. Speaking of Orwellian... Have you noticed what has been going on at college campuses lately where leftwing GroupThink is enforced? Or are you too firmly ensconced in your liberal PBS bubble safe space to notice?
I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and – they feel – powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that – as often happens on TV – a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
Oh yes. And the federal budget is somehow not a Ponzi scheme despite the fact that it requires future generations to pay for the grotesque budgetary overruns of today? Yes, let us continue with the Ponzi scheme favored by Burns and his fellow liberals. Okay, back to the unhinged rant...
As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong.
That was Burns sounding like Elizabeth Warren sounding like Ruth Buzzi as the Bag Lady.
These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
Don't forget the sense of free thinking eroding on college campuses. And should you doubt me, I'll call up Melissa Click to bring some muscle over here.
As could be expected, the reaction to this taxpayer supported chip-on-the-shoulder openly partisan documentary filmmaker lecturing the great unwashed from his liberal high horse did not go over well with many observers as you can see at the YouTube reader reaction to Burns:
Does anyone not see the irony of a Hillary stump speech to the future 1 per-centers? Worship your marching orders elitists...Leyland Stanford is rolling in his grave
Another super rich blasts Trump in front of some of the World's most pretentious elite. Yawn.
Ken Burns is a very wealthy millionaire who has the highest social status in the elite circles, he is a far left liberal-progressive who has no special expertise in politics. He is pretty much reading left-wing tweets, tumblr teen comment sections like they are important facts. Why would he even be speaking?
The great IRONY of these anti-Trump idiots is that they think they are the "good guys" who hold the moral high ground vs demagogery. The fascist-like Orwellian behavior they describe actually applies much more to the intolerant Left.
