Filmmaker Ken Burns said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that if we were “the last best hope of Earth,” we have a responsibility to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.
Political commentator Eddie Glaude said, “Trump is an echo of something old.”
Burns said, “Yes, very, very old. There is the answer: This is where we do it. History is the answer. Right? There is precedent for this. We know there’s precedent. I love these speeches of Lincoln that go one way, Old Testament, really tough, at the second inaugural, ‘If it takes 500 years of the blood drawn by the lash then drawn by the sword’ and suddenly he pivots to, ‘with malice toward none.’ But think about his address to Congress in 1862, what we call the State of the Union. He says, ‘Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.’ It means this is now.”
He continued, “Put it on the line right now. Are you for this democracy? Are you for this first-time experiment in all of human history that said we will trust people to govern themselves? That we will be virtuous? Is that guy virtuous in any way?”
Burns added, “He ends the whole thing as Attorney General Holder said, ‘We are the last best hope of earth.’ So if we are the last best hope of Earth, we have a responsibility next Tuesday to do the right thing and say, we reject this. We are for things. We are not against things. We are for things. We hold some truths to be self-evident. We are in the job of perfecting this union and that’s the thing that will put her over.”
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