Ken Burns hooked me with his documentary The Civil War, which was first shown in 1990 on PBS (but I may have seen later). I inherited an interest in history from my old man, As a kid, I spent hours studying his picture books about events that happened before I was born, particularly wars.
Burns has produced other documentaries about prohibition, the dust bowl, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, jazz and country music, World War II, and the Vietnam war. His latest production is called The U.S. and the Holocaust, and the first of three parts was shown on PBS last night. Many of the books I spent my boyhood studying were pictorial histories of World War II, and the war was still recent enough that Hollywood released a lot of movies about American soldiers fighting German soldiers.
I wondered how something as horrible and terrifying as Hitler and the Third Reich could happen anywhere, and was comforted as a youngster by knowledge that things like Hitler and Nazis could never happen in the United States, Yeah, the naive innocence of youth.
As recently as 2016, I believed it would be impossible for something like the Waste of Shit to occupy the White House and command the devotion of so many U.S. voters. Now I see news photographs taken at the DonHole's latest pep rally in Ohio, and understand the question isn't CAN it happen, but WILL it happen? The new Ken Burns documentary is coming out at an opportune moment.
Even the worst of the previous 44 American presidents wasn't the kind of filth the Waste of Shit has proven to be.
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