This Garbage Has Nothing to do with the American Revolution

At 12 hours long, this latest offering by Ken Burns is 25 percent longer than the original and now lost 9 hour version of Erich von Stroheim’s epic silent film Greed. At such an extreme running time, one might have expected a comprehensive and insightful analysis of what was the greatest revolution in human history.  Such is not the case.

There are a couple of giveaways right off the bat.  Titled The American Revolution, the numerous “voice actors” employed in the production include a whole slew of Hollywood personalities who notoriously suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, including Jeff Daniels, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Mandy Patinkin, Edward Norton, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson and Ethan Hawke, among many others.  Trump haters each and all.

The primary narrator for the entire series is Peter Coyote.  Born Robert Cohon, this individual changed his name to Peter Coyote after ingesting a huge quantity of the hallucinogen Peyote, and he went on to become one of the founders of the drug-saturated Diggers anarchist commune, during the 1967 “Summer of Love” in San Francisco.

Not a promising start.

Additionally, more than two dozen “expert historians” provide commentary for the six episodes, and despite several Pulitzer Prize winners among them, their contributions overall demonstrate a remarkable shallowness with respect to their comprehension of the subjects they pontificate on.

A small few, like Joseph Ellis, struggle to make serious contributions, but the majority seem to have imbibed rather heavily from Howard Zinn’s unbelievably fraudulent History of the American People, leading to a plethora of “woke” commentary.

Obvious and Outrageous Problems

The worst feature of the work is the insistence, hammered away at over and over again, that in allegedly fighting for human liberty, the intention of the American colonists was actually to establish an empire based on black slavery and the extermination of the Indians.  Unbelievably, the twin subjects of black slavery and the murder of Indians and theft of their land takes up a THIRD (!) of the total running time. 

These themes are interspersed throughout the 12-hour narrative such that not ten minutes goes by without a new segment on genocide against the Indians or American abuses of the slaves.  These segments are repeated ad nauseam, and really become the main theme of the entire piece.

More incredibly, in enumerating the crimes against Blacks and Indians, the British are held up as the friends and defenders of both races.  Not just in passing but repeatedly.  The British are portrayed as the champion of the Indians against the American imperialists and land speculators.  Similarly, it is the British who are fighting for black freedom.  One “historian” states that Indians and Slaves would both have benefitted if the Revolution failed,—that the British Empire would have protected them.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others are described as greedy land speculators, intent on making their fortunes off of “stealing” Indian Lands.  One of the “historians” declares that Washington “stole thousands of acres”  of Indian land.  At the same time, Washington is portrayed as a fierce defender of slavery. This is an outrageous falsification of history in every respect. 

Historical Incompetence

The overriding feature of the mini-series is shallowness.  Coyote’s narrative is on the level of a middle school history class, and even many of the “expert” commentators might want to sue the universities which awarded them degrees in American History.  That said, there are other grievous problems.  Here we mention just a few.

1. The monumental evil of the British Empire is never addressed.  The British control of the Trans-Atlantic slave traffic, the British creation of global narcotics trafficking, and the massive genocide carried out by the British in all of their colonies are not mentioned.  Britain’s actual intention in America is completely misrepresented.  Instead the picture put forward is one of an American “tax revolt” against foolish policies demanded by foolish British politicians.

1. This may seem a minor point, but the many quotations read by the voice actors provoked a great deal of irritation.  The person who is quoted the most often, by far, is Abigail Adams, an individual who had very little to do with the winning of the American Revolution.  Her husband John Adams is quoted ten times for every one time that Benjamin Franklin is quoted.  Alexander Hamilton is not quoted at all; neither is Gouverneur Morris; and many key individuals in the Revolution are not even recognized.
2. Ben Franklin is reduced to a near non-existent role.  His opposition to the Stamp Act is mentioned, and his role in negotiating the Paris Peace Treaty is also mentioned, but very short shrift is given to those events, and otherwise he receives less attention than many very minor figures.
3. The long-standing slander that George Washington was an incompetent military commander is stated over and over again.  One of the “historians” compares him very unfavorably to the “brilliance” and “courageousness” of the traitor Benedict Arnold.  The lie that Washington made tactical errors at the Battle of Long Island is stated explicitly, and Washington’s actions at Harlem Heights, White Plains and Germantown are completely misrepresented.  The strategic importance of Washington’s victory at Princeton is passed over, despite the fact that in real life Prussia’s Frederick the Great called Washington’s victory there “brilliant.”

Overall, it was 12 wasted hours watching this nonsense.  Not surprisingly, The American Revolution received rapturous praise in Trump-hating media outlets, such as the New York Times, the Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Politico. The only consoling thought is that probably most of the people who watched it voted for Kamala Harris, so it probably won’t do too much damage to the general American population.