Text of Ken Burns 2024 Commencement Address | Brandeis.
Burns said,
[I]f I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only “us.” There is no “them.” And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there’s a “them,” run away. “Othering” is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I’ve dreaded [because it] forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.
There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route.
The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact, with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion” [and] our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies[d].
Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.