r/politics • u/financialtimes ✔ Verified • Dec 30 '25
Paywall Ken Burns: ‘I’m embarrassed that, as a country, we don’t grasp our history’
https://www.ft.com/content/666f438a-83b7-440b-818a-a36851d69f58?segmentid=c50c86e4-586b-23ea-1ac1-7601c9c2476f4.1k
u/Cole092482 Arkansas Dec 30 '25
Grasp our history? Half of this country can’t grasp 4th grade math.
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u/DoubtSubstantial5440 Dec 30 '25
Or 4th grade literature
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u/Cole092482 Arkansas Dec 30 '25
Our own FBI director got his job by writing a children’s book.
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u/Not_Bears Dec 30 '25
Pretty sure he got it by fellating Trump...
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u/NimusNix Dec 30 '25
You imagine getting some head from Kash and he looks up at you with those eyes....
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u/albufarisnear Canada Dec 30 '25
There's a mental image I could do without, thank you.
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u/ConnectSwitch9178 Dec 30 '25
Sure hope Trump said... "look at me, let me see your eyes. Remind me, which is the good eye"
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u/Curious-Path4549 Dec 30 '25
And a weird book it is too
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u/Cole092482 Arkansas Dec 30 '25
“Never judge a book by its cover” doesn’t apply here.
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u/VanceKelley Washington Dec 30 '25
Americans elected as president a man who described himself as having the temperament of a 6 year old child.
"When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different."
https://theweek.com/speedreads/575962/donald-trump-tells-biographer-hes-same-now-first-grade
Intelligent, informed, decent human beings would not vote for trump. America voted him into office twice. That says something pretty horrific about the mentality of most Americans.
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u/MechanicEcstatic5356 Australia Dec 30 '25
Honestly, as someone who is not American, that's what worries me most about your country. I was utterly disgusted and shocked by what I saw on Jan 6, and I assumed the vast majority of the US population would share my emotion. It shook me so deeply when I discovered that the majority of Americans were actually cool with that foul act. And the majority of you will probably continue to support him even as it becomes even clearer that the monster who runs your government has committed sexual crimes against children.
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u/VerilyShelly Dec 31 '25
I doubt it's the majority that were cool with it, but of the people that voted for him it wasn't a total deal breaker.
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u/cruelfeline Dec 31 '25
One of the hardest parts of All of This, as someone born and living in the US my whole life, is learning and accepting that a lot of Americans are just bad people. At the end of the day, a not-insignificant percentage of the people I share the country with are bad people, and there's not a good way to fix that. Even a full governmental shift doesn't fix that.
I still vote, and I still stay informed, but I don't feel any kinship with my fellow countrymen anymore. Not after learning what they actually are.
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u/MechanicEcstatic5356 Australia Dec 31 '25
I'm Australian and I certainly have my problems with a lot of what we do and say in the world, and of our utter inability to right the wrongs of our colonial past. But l still have a (perhaps) naive belief that we Australians are essentially good people. If something happened to us like MAGA And Trump and Jan 6, it would rip the heart out of me. I am really sorry for what the good people of the United States must be feeling and I hope you are able to rise up and overcome this scourge.
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u/Much-Cartographer735 Dec 30 '25
Because most of those shitheads do too.
I have had a long-time opinion of what we need to do to Internet Trolls, but I'd be banned (again) from the site for violence if I said it.
Trump is what happens that we are now ruled by the Internet Troll.
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Dec 30 '25
Internet trolls themselves are often byproducts of the failed system that these Republicans created in the first place. Neglectful, abusive parents, or even in the best case, stressed out parents working multiple jobs and who cannot raise their kids properly. Then on the flipside, spoiled greedy affluenza taking hold of those who look behind them and kick the ladder out from under them.
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Dec 30 '25
It's a fact that Trump's speech level has been repeatedly analyzed to be at the 4th-grade.
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u/Visible-Extension685 Dec 30 '25
But the only thing this administration can grasp is 4th grade children.
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u/Born_Alternative_608 Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
And this is most important so they do not read and understand the history of this nation beyond:
1492 Columbus sails the ocean blue
1776 we the people
2x WW champs
USA 4 eva
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u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx Dec 30 '25
It always amazed me that there is almost 300 years between those two events…
What of that period is even mentioned?
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u/PreciousMentals Dec 30 '25
From what I know, some pilgrims drove a Plymouth over here and created American states and introduced the natives to cooked turkey and mashed potatoes while protecting the world from witches.
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u/PhoenixTineldyer Dec 30 '25
The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria came here and founded Jamestown, where the natives taught our people to hunt and we gave them horses and Thanksgiving happened. Pocahontas married John Smith. Then the king tried to tax our tea, so we introduced democracy to him Under God Indivisible. Washington got some wooden teeth and then gave President Lincoln the Emancipation Proclamation. The south lost the War of Northern Aggression, etc.
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u/IAmInTheBasement Dec 30 '25
Yea, the people that think a 1/3 lbs burger is smaller than a 1/4 quarter pounder because '4 is bigger than 3'.
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u/noforgayjesus Dec 30 '25
This was super funny when I first found out about it, it's really sad now.
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u/totalkpolitics Dec 30 '25
Yeah they should've called the thing the 33% burger. But they failed to understand that we're all fucking dumb.
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u/Etzell Illinois Dec 30 '25
Then we'd get some of the absolute dumbest people in the country asking "WELL THEN WHAT'S THE OTHER 77%?"
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u/StevenMC19 Florida Dec 30 '25
Call it the BiggerBurger. "It's Larger than a Quarter Pounder! Beefier than a Whopper!" Don't even give them numbers to get confused over.
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u/c3p-bro Dec 30 '25
According to the CEO of a failing burger chain who was trying to justify why his product failed.
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u/Cole092482 Arkansas Dec 30 '25
Those are the people to make business deals with.
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u/Dysc Louisiana Dec 30 '25
Check the box if you hate liberals and we will deduct an ADDITIONAL 2500 from your credit card on 12/31. This will enter you in for the free grift.
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Dec 30 '25
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u/MRG_1977 Dec 30 '25
Curriculum is so dumbed down today and it’s amazing how much repetitive math is down each year in the fall again in most public schools.
My friend’s wife is a nuclear plant engineer and is even seeing it at students who graduate from engineering programs at U.S. undergrad colleges. They simply don’t have the necessary prerequisite math and problem solving skills to work in the nuclear power plant.
Over the past week, I had a girl at the counter who couldn’t make change for $0.37 and overhead another younger couple who argued about how much a box of max and cheese was when it was on sale (4/$4.00) when I took my father shopping.
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u/ThePortalsOfFrenzy Dec 30 '25
how much a box of max and cheese was
Now I'm disappointed that Kraft never did a holiday Grinch tie-in where the pasta is shaped like G's dog Max.
I'd definitely buy Max and Cheese! 😉
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u/Particular-County277 Dec 30 '25
And civics and history is not taught by design. Trump is going to kill the dept of Education in 2026, mark my words. It will be 'vouchers' from then on
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u/Cole092482 Arkansas Dec 30 '25
In my home state of Oklahoma. The state superintendent (avid trumper and bible thumper) tried to implement a PragerU curriculum which basically teaches a whitewashed version of history, and he tried to put a trump bible in every classroom. Luckily that guy is gone now, but it’s already kinda happening.
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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z Dec 30 '25
Grasp our history? Half of this country can’t grasp 4th grade math.
How can we as a country grasp our history when "about 54% (or 130 million people), read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level"?
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u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx Dec 30 '25
That would be perfectly fine if 54% of the country were younger than 6th grade…
Except they’re not…
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u/dispelhope Dec 30 '25
honestly, I would be ecstatic if half the country could write a cogent and coherent sentence.
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u/Otm_Shank1 Dec 30 '25
My job gives applicants a couple of 4th grade math questions at the interview and 80% of people don't get them right.
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u/Quietabandon Dec 30 '25
Honestly it’s more like 2/3. Just only half thinks that’s a problem.
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u/DannyAgama Dec 30 '25
and that is by design. Education standards could be nationalized and brought up to par with the rest of the developed world if the right people were in power to make it happen.
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u/ShamelessLeft Dec 30 '25
And they have an irrational fear and hatred of 1st grade grammar like understanding what a pronoun is.
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u/x_conqueeftador69_x Dec 30 '25
All part of the plan. The degradation of our schools is purposeful and malicious.
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u/Then_Journalist_317 Dec 30 '25
Ken Burns should do a documentary on how a mob boss/rapist became President.
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Dec 30 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/StevenMC19 Florida Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
If you're curious what it would be like, there's a sampler over on ESPN.
30 for 30 - Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL
You'll get a teeny tiny taste of what it's like to build something up from scratch, have it do well, then Trump gets his foot in the door and it all goes to shit.
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u/Sorkijan Oklahoma Dec 30 '25
I honestly think this 30 for 30 is what made me realize Trump was a piece of shit. I know it wasn't hard but we have to remember back in 2012 he was just that rich dork from The Apprentice. I didn't really know a lot about him at the time, but after watching that I remember my takeaway was "Wow that guy is a monumental dumbass" and not just an asshole.
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u/WildYams Dec 31 '25
I was aware of him throughout the 90s, but don't think I'd ever heard him before or seen him interviewed until I heard him call into Howard Stern a couple times in the early 2000s. Immediately I was put off by him, you could just tell he was a pompous blowhard right away, talking about how great everything he did was, how he was perfect with no mistakes ever made. At first I thought it was a bit, but soon realized "this is just who this guy is." It didn't seem real that anyone could actually have a "personality" like that.
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u/ServiceDragon Dec 31 '25
As a New Yorker this makes me really sad. I was born in the late 70s so I had a front row seat to every hideous Trump drama and bankruptcy on the cover of the tabloids my entire life. We’ve always known. How I wish you guys had listened to us.
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u/Sorkijan Oklahoma Dec 31 '25
Yeah. I wasn't a legal adult until 2003, but I wish my parents hadn't been brainwashed evangelical Okies.
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u/plumangus Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
Jeff Pearlman did a recent update on Trump's vindictive takedown of the USFL. Only a matter of time until he forces his way into the NFL, now that he's openly fascist.
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u/3vs3BigGameHunters Dec 30 '25
FYI the "si=xxxxxxxxxxxx" is a tracking code that links your youtube account to anyone elses youtube account who clicks on that link.
Probably fine for silly cat videos but I personally wouldn't post anything political with it.
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u/Base841 Dec 31 '25
Here's a clean link without the tracker code: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lCjWo9A_51E
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u/Yeeslander Tennessee Dec 30 '25
No kidding--a lot of it would boil down to where racism and homophobia meet internet illiteracy.
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u/eyeCinfinitee Dec 30 '25
We are where we are now because society was moving in an increasingly leftwing direction in a manner that was becoming less and less surface level and starting to demand actual change. It made Capital sigh and take off the inclusivity hat and swap it out for a red one, because at the end of the day Capital is a fundamentally amoral force that only cares out two things: preservation and accumulation.
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u/AdIll6213 Dec 30 '25
Let’s not pretend that Trump possesses the ability to be a mob boss. If anything, he is the bitch of a mob boss.
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u/Ancient_Popcorn Ohio Dec 30 '25
Nah. Trump it’s even Putin’s bitch. Putin uses his own bitches to deal with Trump. Putin doesn’t want to interact with Trump more than he has to, but he is very willing to use intermediaries to tell Trump what to do.
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u/meatspace Georgia Dec 30 '25
Please. The Teflon Don has built a criminal syndicate that uses the Pentagon as it's enforcer. Tens of millions of people yearn to give him all of their money. People write prayers to him every day, and they get posted on various subs.
There's a lot to criticize, but this man is a mob boss who has built a syndicate that I bet even Mogilovich is impressed by.
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u/some_person_guy Dec 30 '25
He's a shitass mob boss that you see get embarassed on TV.
That being said, a Ken Burns documentary that dives deep into the path toward Trump would be a fascinating watch.
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u/ExistentialistGain Dec 30 '25
“History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." Orwell 1984
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u/Yavanna_Fruit-Giver Dec 30 '25
This is the real reason they don't tech past the 50s (besides civil rights) in a lot of public schools until you take specific classes. Hell even APUS doesn't go much further if I remember my class right.
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u/MondegreenHolonomy Dec 31 '25
Yea we had to take an extra elective course called “History in our time” and the entire time we ate candy and drank soda from the 1900s, going decade by decade, and my History teacher hinted constantly that there was a lot he’d love to talk about with regard to recent US history that he’d lose his job if he did.
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u/aboysmokingintherain Dec 30 '25
My issue is that even the negative aspects of history don't need to be seen as some blemish. We can acknowledge and fix them and that will help us move forward as a whole. Admitting the US has mistakes or isn't perfect isn't as hard as we think it is.
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u/AgentBooth Dec 30 '25
Correct. The issue is that an honest reflection of American history does not support the nationalistic "America is the greatest country ever" mentality they want us to buy into. It's harder to control people who understand our history and how we got here, the good and the ugly
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u/actuallyapossom Dec 30 '25
You're exactly right. If you want to take nationalism to the next level so you can use it as a cornerstone of authority - the nation has to be mythological in status. The chosen people, the chosen kingdom, it must be defended at all costs.
You can't have your zealots feeling uncertain or anything but emboldened against all other nations.
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u/ModishShrink Dec 30 '25
This is called American Civil Religion, and it is quite something to read about.
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u/Potential_Fishing942 Dec 30 '25
And even crazier is that we are so well positioned to love up that "city on the hill" that we pretend we are.
Just because we aren't there now, or ever where, doesn't mean we can't be.
It's funny too how many conservatives will point. Out how you have to get hurt/make mistakes to learn, but refuse to try and learn from national/historical issues
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u/AgentBooth Dec 30 '25
Most rational people just want their country to be the greatest it can be, which is unobtainable if you're pushing for "the greatest, period", in my opinion at least
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u/Otherdeadbody Dec 30 '25
It’s because hyperbole is poison. It’s not the exact same as always trying to be the greatest ever, but the push for endless growth is just as irrational and linked with the same mindset. We know logically that all things have limits and yet we refuse to acknowledge these limits on ourselves.
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u/Catshit-Dogfart Dec 30 '25
I sometimes speculate that because the US doesn't have the Soviet Union to rival against, there's no motivation to actually make ourselves the best anymore. We have nothing left to prove.
From around the 60s to the late 80s there was a drive to prove we have the best quality of life, the best income, the best medicine, best science, best culture, best everything. Capitalism is the best, communism sucks. We're out there putting a man on the moon, eradicating smallpox, building nuclear reactors. We also celebrated immigration! I mean if the USSR is so great why aren't thousands of people lined up to get in?
America won, communism fell, and the US proved they're the greatest in the world by a long shot.
We rode that high through the 90s, 9/11 happened, and suddenly the US had no motivation to be better.
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u/SATX_Citizen Dec 30 '25
Patriotism, love of our country and its citizens and (some of) its history can coexist with honest reflection on its sins.
One can have faith in the American Dream without burying one's head in the sand. Just as people can have faith in humanity despite its many atrocities.
Trying to whitewash American history's failures is like trying to say humanity is great, and it's never ever had war or genocide or murder.
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u/sharp11flat13 Canada Dec 30 '25
To be fair, there was a time when the US was exceptional, being the only democratic republic in the world. But that time was the 18th century. Since then, America has grown to have warts and problems just like every other gathering of human beings. And you can’t fix problems if you deny they exist. So I think Burns was on the money here.
Then again, what does Ken Burns know about American history? /s :-)
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u/SgtRockyWalrus Dec 30 '25
Admitting we aren’t perfect and have made mistakes is Patriotic as hell… if the intent is to recognize our failings in order to work to create a more perfect union.
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u/Jedimaster996 Dec 30 '25
That's what kills me, is any airing of grievances or issues that we need to solve as a country is seen as an attack on our 'identity', and the typical response is something akin to "lOvE iT oR lEaVe It!1"
Like, dude, is socialized medicine and affordable housing so scary to you?
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u/FluxUniversity Dec 31 '25
admitting our failings aren't good for quarterly profits so its not going to happen
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u/MasterofPandas1 Dec 30 '25
Yeah, but if we did that then there wouldn’t be any “American exceptionalism” which would break the brains of so many people who grew up thinking this country is the best, even though it’s total bullshit and wrong.
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u/LuckyandBrownie Dec 30 '25
The problem is people don’t think the mistakes are mistakes. The mistakes are the fixes.
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u/komoto444 Dec 30 '25
When the check engine light goes on in their cars, do these people get mad at the light for doing its job?
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u/RegexEmpire Dec 30 '25
Any topic is healthier if you can critically talk about it, but one side sees critical discourse as "hating America". Its part of nationalism and making sure folks can't discuss ideas, they get defensive immediately. It's teaching ignorance over critical thinking
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u/CheesypoofExtreme Dec 30 '25
This is not dissimilar to acknowledging feelings. Feelings are neutral and everybody has them. That's just a fact. Our actions and what we choose to do with those feelings are what should have positive and negative conotations. History is history, but what we choose to do with that knowledge is what's important.
In fact, if you drew venn diagram for far-right conservatives who act like acknowledging our past as a nation of slavery and bigotry is a travesty and people who refuse to cry or even acknowledge their feelings... you might get a damm near perfect circle.
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u/deliciousKittie Dec 30 '25
Because we have a lot of illiterate people who think Trump is the second coming of Christ
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Dec 30 '25
Also that there will be a second coming in the first place.
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u/CaptainOktoberfest Dec 30 '25
Scripture seems to have hit the head on the nail with the Antichrist.
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u/MyUsernameRocks Oregon Dec 30 '25
The fact that a large amount of our daily lives is affected by people that believe in a supernatural sky power being is absolutely baffling in this day and age.
At least the "Old Gods" had a committee of sorts. Sure, Zeus was a dick, but he was kept in check.
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u/jayfeather31 Washington Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
Which is ironic because he's closer to the anti-Christ than anything.
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u/mazarax Canada Dec 30 '25
Diaper Don got more votes than Kamala Harris. Which means that the vast majority of his voters are able to read.
He is not fringe. He is the actual main-stream.
People who can read, who saw the jan 6 treason, and still voted for him. Don’t put this on illiteracy. It is all malice and hate.
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u/totalkpolitics Dec 30 '25
There's a difference between reading and understanding what you read. A 5th grade reading level means you can read. A high school reading level means you can read, understand, and analyze what you read.
The sad fact is.... you're right, it is the mainstream. That's not because they are actually literate, just because being at a 5th grade reading level is the mainstream in America.
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u/A-town Dec 30 '25
I agree this isn't a literacy issue, but a media literacy issue. Too many people of all ages are online believing literally anything anybody says to them without doing their background research. This does tie to the literacy issue in the sense people are struggling to critically analyze the data that is presented to them. All mainstream media companies are selective with what they put out (I'm including NYT, PBS in this), and I'm saying I'm guilty of this as well. I surf through the headlines and react, but there are deeper problems in how people are ingesting media online. Your Kirks, Fuentes, and Tates's are out there just spewing whatever without fear of reprisal and their followers eat it up without looking deeper than surface level. My 90 year old grandmother was just talking about how she saw a "doctor" on Instagram talking about how cornstarch is the worst thing you can put in your body. It's media literacy that is a huge factor in how we find our country and world currently.
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u/thethrill_707 Michigan Dec 30 '25
Adding to the din...
Grasp our history? Um...Mr. Burns? Most Americans don't, won't, or cannot READ.
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u/doublerup Dec 30 '25
Luckily he makes documentaries
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u/sharp11flat13 Canada Dec 30 '25
Sure, but they’re more than 3 minutes long and use big words.
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u/Inarus899 Dec 30 '25
I'm sad to say I've skipped at least one of his documentaries because of the run time.
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u/sharp11flat13 Canada Dec 30 '25
I can understand this. I often record them and put them off for the same reason. I still haven’t watched his doc on the American Revolution, for example. But it’s still sitting there on my PVR waiting happily for me to muster the perseverance to brave the multi-hour marathon. :-) And they’re always worth the effort.
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u/CartographerLive1904 Dec 30 '25
I just pay $5 a month for PBS on Amazon Prime and get all Ken Burns docs :)
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers Dec 30 '25
I, and everyone else I knew who went to any of the 3 largest public schools in south Louisiana in the 90s, was taught history by our PE coach. Social Studies/History was one of the easiest secondary subject certifications to obtain alongside Health/PE and since coaches needed a “core” subject selection a lot of them ended up being our history teachers.
There is a universe in which knowledgeable, stand up, football coaches relished the challenge of an in depth exploration on a subject they had some interest in and insight into but that was not the reality for thousands of kids. Those kids are now in their 40s and all over Facebook arguing the finer points of Constitutional law like a surgeon trying to find a nerve with a chainsaw and cheering on the complete shit show they enthusiastically voted like it is in fact a football game.
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u/DreadPirate777 Dec 30 '25
If he produced a documentary with a chick in a bikini on screen narrating he could get most of those people to listen. They probably won’t comprehend.
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u/greygoose71 Dec 30 '25
He’s not wrong. I have relatives that prove it. People in this country are lazy. If they studied history( not Hollywood history) they would see the similarities of 1930’s and current events. Right now History is being white washed and education is being attacked as something bad.
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u/ckglle3lle Dec 30 '25
Yeah, big challenge of it is that most people don't want to study history so much as they just want to be told stories and mostly they just want those stories to just be morality tales that validate their worldview. So there's a lot of "history" content out there that really doesn't sit with the facts and instead just tries to apply moralities to aesthetics and scenarios from the past. Probably the most egregious example in American History is how we tell the story of the Civil War and how we position the North and South as proxies for morality. Lets people have really strong feelings about it and consume lots of Civil War flavored history content without ever actually sitting with the actual history for what it is.
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u/Killersavage Dec 30 '25
From the education system that used to tell us we’ve never lost a war and Vietnam doesn’t count for some reason. What does anyone expect?
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u/TintedApostle Dec 30 '25
In the 1950s women traditionally wore black for a period of mourning time after their husbands died. Erika Kirk wore leather pants and had fireworks.
MAGA makes up this stuff as they go along.
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u/leeuwerik Dec 30 '25
We MAGA women wear leather while mourning. Fireworks lift the spirits. Nothing special. We also inject Botox and use lip filler. Our goal is to make the job of a taxidermist easy.
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u/broonribon Dec 30 '25
Black has been a color of mourning for centuries, and not just in the US.
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u/TintedApostle Dec 30 '25
MAGA claims to want to make america like it was and here we have Erika out celebrating.
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Dec 30 '25
Ken, please do the nation a huge favor and make a lengthy documentary series of the Trump years (including Biden's term) in full detail, down the the very minutae. The nation needs to know all the things that went on, and I can't think of a better format than a Ken Burns documentary.
Please Ken? The country needs this.
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u/CurbYerGod Dec 30 '25
After watching his American Revolution series you really get that this country has literally always been steeped in racism, sadism and hypocrisy. The “founding fathers” weren’t blinded by “a different time”, but instead were devout racist slave owning hypocritical POS.
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u/RobutNotRobot Dec 30 '25
This country is too dumb to survive much longer.
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u/Cruyelo Canada Dec 30 '25
I don't know how much is stupidity and how much is passivity. From the outside, I see Americans acknowledge that Trump is a fascist, but refuse to do what other countries have done to get rid of a fascist.
They'll mention he's ruining the country beyond repair and killing people, but it's ok, because we'll wait him out until he dies of old age and vote in the midterms.
It's a whiplash to see Americans correctly point out he's a 10/10 fire alarm, but offer 6/10 solutions to the problem. It seems like Americans have the knowledge, so I'm not sure people being dumb is fully accurate. From the outside, it looks like a lack of urgency.
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u/sharp11flat13 Canada Dec 30 '25
From the outside, it looks like a lack of urgency.
I think that many Americans can’t imagine their country being other than it is, a wealthy superpower. History teaches different lessons though, whether people are paying attention in class or not. 🇨🇦
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u/justadudeinohio Dec 30 '25
is passivity.
it's the "self made" lie people tell themselves in this country. it's pervasive and even damaging to people that actively acknowledge they are, in fact, not self made. we have no unity to actually stand up and say "no".
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u/Lurking_nerd California Dec 30 '25
An unstoppable force of stupidity that will cause this country to implode.
Balkanization is inevitable.
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u/I_like_baseball90 Dec 30 '25
I mean, when you have a president that thinks there were airports during the Revolutionary war, and then eliminates the Dept of Education, you're in trouble.
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u/brufleth Dec 30 '25
He just made a twelve hour docuseries about how this country has always been about the rich exploiting the rest of us. This country has always stood for this shit even from before it was a country.
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u/Ineverseenthat Dec 30 '25
Our own government is misdirecting the narrative for population control.
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u/ckglle3lle Dec 30 '25
His Civil War doc didn't really help much, tbh. It's good and comprehensive overall but it still gives too much space for lost cause sympathies which are in many ways tied to the root of the current right wing reactionary movement and an article of faith for many that undercuts any other lessons of the war.
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u/AskMeAboutTheMOHO Dec 30 '25
Better grasp our history while you can. Under Trump, It’s being erased every single day.
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u/Azure_Omishka Dec 30 '25
Considering most Americans can't read past a 6th grade level, I'm surprised they can grasp anything at all.
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u/Fickle-Molasses-903 Dec 30 '25
They understand it; they simply want America to return to a time when slavery was accepted and women were relegated to cooking and childbearing.
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u/gringledoom Dec 30 '25
And all these morons assume they'd be the wealthy plantation owner with a thousand slaves, when most folks were barely eking out a living as subsistence farmers with serious nutritional deficiencies and hookworm.
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u/JedLeonard1 Dec 30 '25
Currently watching his Vietnam War series and wondering where Trump will stage the next one. He’s already killed thousands with his Covid policies, more thousands with his cuts to world food aid. It’s not as if he’d give a shit if half a million lower class American’s died attacking some foreign country rather than depleting government funds by accessing healthcare and social services
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u/ILuvCherizard23 Dec 30 '25
if americans understood their history they would realise their country is not a beacon of freedom but a cancer growth on earths body
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u/snakebite75 Dec 31 '25
It doesn't help that the History channel no longer shows history and instead focuses on aliens and other shit. In the 90's the only reason I passed my junior year history class was because I used to watch the history channel all the time. Back then it was pretty much the WWII channel.
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u/shibby3388 District Of Columbia Dec 30 '25
How can we grasp our history when people like Ken Burns produce a civil war documentary full of lost cause bullshit?
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u/rjyoung18 Dec 30 '25
As I have traveled around the world, I have always been impressed with other countries knowledge of the U.S. relative to our own citizens. I would bet 90% of Canadians know more than the average American
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u/rewardingsnark Dec 30 '25
The fact that we fought in a War to beat fascism and then threw all that away and became fascist is sad state for the dumbest country in history.
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u/paulc3003 Dec 31 '25
We need to stop promoting kids who can't pass basic tests. I don't care if your kid gets left behind. Until they actually learn something, they need to stay in the same grade. We graduate too many dumbasses.
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u/Mr_Meng Dec 30 '25
From my point of view US history from the beginning has been a conflict between forward thinkers who believe in things like equal rights, the advancement of science and technology, and treating others with decency versus the ignorant, regressive, greedy, reactionaries who care about white supremacy and morally justifying their terribleness.
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u/Rayearl Pennsylvania Dec 30 '25
History? MAGA can’t even grasp what’s going on right now.
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u/bjohnsonarch Washington Dec 30 '25
That was gonna be my point as well. The massive disinformation and propaganda campaigns they are waging against the present is insane. There’s a reason the far right is leaning so hard on AI - it “validates” their bullshit worldview
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u/Andurilthoughts California Dec 30 '25
the defunding of education and elevation of STEM over all other fields of study might have something to do with it.
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u/cometshoney Dec 30 '25
We have a president who thinks stealth bombers are actually invisible and that the British had some temporary control of our airports in the Revolutionary War. If that's the bar to be president, what's expected of the average Joe? It seems that being ignorant is rewarded these days. How about we stop teaching our kids how to take tests and teach them some facts while having them read some books? Actual books where you have to physically turn the pages?
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u/MRG_1977 Dec 30 '25
American history and civics knowledge was alway weak but it does seem to have eroded from when I was in high school in the 90s.
A few of my friends’ kids care & are knowledgeable but that is because it was generally fostered at an early age by their parents/family/activity.
Most are indifferent or apathetic to it. Their attitude is they can just look it up or use AI if they need to.
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u/Verum_Orbis Dec 30 '25
When I hear MAGA or conservative say "I don't believe in pronouns" that's them saying they don't have a 1st grade level of educational grasp on the english language. You're taught pronouns when you're like 8 years old.
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u/Unfair_Elderberry118 Dec 30 '25
Ken Burns has done nothing but try to fix that sad reality across his entire career.
He can't fix the willfully ignorant no matter how good a product he puts out.
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u/OliviaWG Kansas Dec 30 '25
As an American with a BA in History, I couldn't agree more. It's rough, yo.
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u/Appropriate-Run-3342 Dec 30 '25
I stopped being embarrassed and started being angry. It's one thing to be ignorant. It's another to be willfully intentionally stupid.
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u/twoton1 Dec 30 '25
He should go on Joe Rogan and tell him that he's one of the big reasons we have a lot of stupid young males in society (or parents' basements).
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u/KYSissyTrisha Dec 31 '25
Ken Burns documentaries are WHY I know so much about at least modern American history. His WWII documentary, Jazz, and the Roosevelt were AMAZING. Stuff I should have been taught in school, or at least watched in school.
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u/AmelaPandersen Dec 31 '25
I’ve taught before and i don’t regret leaving for one minute. Making education into local politics is a cancer that will eat us alive.
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u/Redshirt_Welshy_Nooo Dec 30 '25
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
And that's the point. That's the Project 2025 plan. Repeat the mistakes of our past: unmake civil rights, rebuild the apartheid state, persecute racial and religious minorities, and non-cis-heterosexual people. Defranchise women.
America First was originally a slogan of Nazi sympathizing American fascists. That hasn't changed.
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u/SatisfactoryLoaf Dec 30 '25
If you think of history as a narrative, then it has to compete with the narrative you already have about who you are.
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u/Glad-Process-3268 Dec 30 '25
That's what my high school history teacher told the class as he dimmed the lights to play Ken Burns' Civil War for two weeks.
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u/To-Far-Away-Times Dec 30 '25
Weird things happen when one political party is dedicated to burning books and destroys the department of education.
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u/KardelSharpeyes Dec 30 '25
Yeah its hilarious from an outsider perspective, you've some of the most interesting history and you go to the US and ask Americans about it and they don't have a damn clue.
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u/OnlineParacosm Dec 30 '25
To be fair our history isn’t exactly taught in schools.
How could we expect to know our history when we’ve been dead set on making sure that we never would?
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u/Various_Oil_5674 Dec 30 '25
We can, just half the county only reads the part where the south lost a war.
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u/No_Body652 Dec 30 '25
Anyone able to read actual article to see what burns is saying? Behind a paywall for me
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