Hearing of the loud booing and catcalls being thrust at Trump as he spoke to the Libertarian convention in Washington D.C. last weekend, I looked to tune in hoping to enjoy the experience. It wasn’t fun. Yes, there were many who were yelling out against him as he spoke, but make no mistake, there were others who cheered him.

What came across most clearly was just how completely vile this man Trump is. Under the pressure of a yelling and screaming crowd, Trump’s reptilian demeanor came to the forefront. His entire speech, which was actually quite long and read verbatim off of a teleprompter, was delivered with a gravelly, hostile tone, almost as if a menacing hiss lay behind every word. There were plenty of gratuitous name-calling and egregious lies saturating the remarks, but it was the tone, the angry, raspy hating tone that defined it. No one could cheer such remarks who was not him or herself sharing their nasty, seething temper inside their own heads, or otherwise was too fearful of them to oppose them.

The experience made the news of Nicky Haley’s endorsement of Trump seem so especially and brazenly foul. How could this seemingly civil person throw in her lot with such a foul forked-tongue demon? It is breathtaking to contemplate.

But lest we totally despair, on the other side last weekend was also the occasion for the remarks at the Brandeis University’s commencement by filmmaker historian Ken Burns. He told the graduates the following:

“Listen, I am in the business of history. It is not always a happy subject on college campuses these days, particularly when forces seem determined to eliminate or water down difficult parts of our past,” he said.
“For nearly 50 years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously tried to maintain a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding advocacy if I could, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens,” he continued.”Over those many decades I’ve come to understand a significant fact, that we are not condemned to repeat, as the saying goes, what we don’t remember. That is a beautiful, even poetic phrase, but not true. Nor are there cycles of history as the academic community periodically promotes.

“…If 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 and 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, when, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, ‘The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.’ 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,’ James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesied. 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.

“…Choose honor over hypocrisy, virtue over vulgarity, discipline over dissipation, character over cleverness, sacrifice over self-indulgence. Do not lose your enthusiasm, in its Greek etymology the word enthusiasm means simply, ‘god in us’. Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Denounce oppression everywhere.

“…Remember what Louis Brandeis said, ‘The most important political office is that of the private citizen.’ Vote. Please, vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship, and most important, our kinship with each other when you do.”

Memorable words.