Labhaoise

Now that I’ve seen the entire Ken Burns series on the American Revolution - here is my overall impression: It’s good and worth watching if you don’t know much about this history - and even if you do, if this kind of thing entertains you. I learned several new things (and I’ve read a lot) so that was welcome. There are legitimate criticisms. I pointed out that episode 1 made misleading claims about the American population being ‘diverse.’ It wasn’t in the sense that most of the people were British - the diversity had to do with religious particularities, some Dutch, some Germans, some Irish - but really it was mostly British - and mostly English. The problem with calling this ‘diverse’ is that it’s an effort to make the Babylon of today with Somalians scamming all of Minnesota a natural outgrowth from our origins. And that’s not true. There are also many interludes on slavery. But I think that’s mostly ok - slavery was a thing. It is ok to talk about George Washington and his relationship to slavery. These interludes are short, so I don’t see the fuss. There are people complaining about too much focus on Muslims and Jews. Again - these are almost throwaway lines in the documentary. It is a little silly to claim the Revolution was anything other than a British civil war - but the time spent on this is minimal. On the good side - probably 10 of the overall 12 hours are solid discussion of the reasons for the conflict, the actual battles, the really important personalities on both sides. I like also that they talked about the loyalists - I think we should know what motivated them. So to sum up - it’s a pretty good contribution to American history content. People watching this who didn’t know much will learn a lot - much more than they would learn in a classroom in our decrepit schools. The complaints and quibbles are legitimate. But the people claiming this is nothing but a leftwing propaganda piece overall are aiming for attention or just didn’t watch it.