Dear Ken Burns 2.0,
Since I don’t have a century to burn, I’m conjuring you now.
As I watch the tragic and beautiful shenanigans of the human race unfold each day, I wonder: Who will tell these stories in 100 years? How will they convey what it was like to live through these times?
I am assigning all of it to you, my friend from the future, and I’m imagining you as the next Ken Burns, hence the designation Ken Burns 2.0 (KB2).
You haven’t even been born, yet here I am assuming you’ll fill the giant shoes of one of our greatest documentarians. Burns chronicled the stories of The National Parks, The Vietnam War, Prohibition and too many others to list. He’s done so with such gripping command of the material, I can barely take my eyes from the screen whenever his work airs.
I fear your job KB2, will be bigger than all of your predecessor’s tasks combined.
I have no idea where to begin, so I’ll pick a moment that represents a crystal clear delineation between the Before Times and the After Times. Those designations are my chosen constructs, but whenever I use them in conversation, people know exactly what I mean—even if their own delineation point is different from mine. And while we all agree humanity is rounding a significant corner in history, that’s where the consensus ends.
For me, St. Patrick's Day 2020 represents the pivotal moment. I walked and walked amid the empty streets, feeling like Charleton Heston in the 1971 post-apocalyptic film, The Omega Man, but I was no movie star.
I was just regular ol’ Erin living through an event upon which that film and so many others were loosely based, except this was real. A deadly virus, Covid 19, was descending upon humanity. Much about it was unknown, but we knew it was airborne. Hence everyone had fled to the Great Indoors.
It was positively surreal.
I obviously survived (although seven million people did not, including about a million Americans). Since then, KB2, nary a week has gone by that should escape any historian’s eye, particularly one as scrutinizing as I trust yours will be.
To that end, I’ve compiled this incomplete and messy list of topics (noted in bold) that you’ll want to cover in future documentaries.
I’ll begin with the Novel Coronavirus (see my previous comments). In addition to the staggering loss of life, subtopics might include the weird interruptions to our mundane existence (toilet paper shortages, “work from home,” the Great Resignation), and more significantly, the transformation of the public’s view of healthcare professionals from everyday heroes to arch villains. This led to the collapse of belief in vaccines, which were previously considered to be among the most significant achievements in human health care. Neither phenomenon applies to everyone, but they’ve entered our legislative bodies nonetheless.
Aside: You’ll likely use the word “weaponized” quite a bit.
Covering Covid will bleed into our worldwide political splintering (see: the ongoing war in Ukraine and the unimaginable Israel/Hamas conflict). Stateside, you might want to lead with the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
I’m not sure where you’ll go with any of this, KB2, because we’re still living through it. I can assert, however, that the chains of events leading up to these things are each long and grisly tales populated with diametrically opposing viewpoints. Truth gets harder and harder to find every day.
Other ongoing troubles include our deepening racial divisions. As I write this, KB2, the question of whether or not to give POTUS complete and absolute immunity from any law is raging (which also seems like a topic that would merit some sort of historical mentioning). I note it here because it reminds me of an evening a few years ago when a group of right-leaning locals were clucking their tongues in disgust because Derek Chauvin & Co. were about to be held accountable for the murder of George Floyd.
Hence, you’ll need to make it clear that plenty of Americans have been conflating the concepts of “immunity” and “impunity” for some time, particularly when it comes to racial matters. (Kyle Rittenhouse, incidentally should fit into this portion of the puzzle somehow.)
While the idea of unfettered impunity for presidents and murderers is gaining popularity, there is also plenty of newfound criminality to go around. Case in point: having a miscarriage can get you charged with a crime, (file that one somewhere under the reversal of Roe vs. Wade), so can wearing a dress while reading to kids.
Back in 2012, your namesake orchestrated a sweeping documentary on The Dust Bowl. Frankly, KB2, that phenomenon is likely to be dwarfed by the ongoing climate change crisis. This is a big one, but if you’re looking for a flashy detail to launch into it, temperatures exceeding 100 degrees in Siberia certainly got my attention.
Then again, will that even be worth mentioning 100 years from now? Maybe not. In your day, perhaps photo evidence of a spring snow storm from the merry old 2000’s will be more remarkable then sweltering temperatures above the Arctic circle.
You’ll also want to tap the transformation of mass shootings from horrific headline events to daily occurrences, the rise of conspiracy theories (see QAnon, Flat Earthers, etc.), and the burgeoning impact of Artificial Intelligence.
I am loathe to guess what other topics you might have on your plate in 100 years. World War III? Perhaps it will be the United States’ war with Mexico, or maybe we’ll keep it local with a new civil war, for which the kindling is already being gathered.
A reelected Trump intends to requisition National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and then deploy them into Democratic-run states whose governors refuse to cooperate with their deportation drive.
Such deployment of red-state forces into blue states, over the objections of their mayors and governors, would likely spark intense public protest and possibly even conflict with law-enforcement agencies under local control. And that conflict itself could become the justification for further insertion of federal forces into blue jurisdictions, notes Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.
—Ronald Brownstein for The Atlantic, Feb. 8, 2024.
As for Donald J. Trump, you’re on your own unraveling that topic, my friend. Just know his fingerprints are so ubiquitous, they’ve become a phenomenon known as MAGA.
How in the hell are you going to make sense of all this?
Normally, I’d say you simply start the way a person starts—with research. But the fact is, KB2, I’m more than a little worried about what sort of ground-level evidence will be available to you. Censorship is enjoying a thrumming resurrection, from book bans to whitewashed social media feeds.
Furthermore, despite what we’ve been told, the Internet isn’t forever. Sometimes info is erased in the name of misguided modernization, and sometimes the reasons are more nefarious. Online news can be easily altered or eliminated all together.
In lieu of truth, maybe your documentaries will feature American streets pulled directly from the set of “The Truman Show” or “Leave it to Beaver” or the Happiest Place on Earth.
I would surely understand if your head is spinning by now, KB2. I know mine is, but there’s one more thing, perhaps the most important thing of all.
We let all of this happen, particularly here in the United States where freedom is still a thing. We sipped our Flat Whites and scrolled through every one of these headlines while an impotent little voice in the back of our collective head reassured us. It will be fine. It always is.
Lastly, KB2, add all this up and it sure feels like something is going on across the entire human species, some deeply primal reaction to a massive existential threat—one even the staunchest climate change deniers feel in their bones: Resources are only going to get scarcer and scarcer; the fight for them will get bloodier and bloodier.
I fear, my friend from the future, the fight is already on.
Love, Erin
ps: Normally, I would eschew a postscript for a correspondence of such gravity, but these are strange times.
In the course of this writing America has endured yet another mass shooting, this one at a celebration parade for Super Bowl LVIII. In addition to the now familiar and cloying “thoughts & prayers” offered up in its wake, this tragedy struck a quiet and personal note for me.
In July 2023, I visited the National WWI Memorial in Kansas city, which overlooks the site where the shooting occurred. I was so moved by the Memorial, I penned a letter to two statues situated there. At that time, I never could have imagined Memory and Future would have to shield their eyes from horrors erupting right in their own back yard.
This is what it’s like, KB2. This is exactly what it’s like.
