Many people have been enthralled by Ken Burns latest film, this one on the American Revolution. Burns and his crew are tremendous filmmakers. The script always flows seamlessly, incorporating visuals, talking heads, and narration seemingly based on extensive research. He has a winning technique, which he employs no matter the subject matter– jazz, baseball, the Roosevelts, the Dust Bowl or the Revolution. The subject matter is forced to fit the technique, but that technique always seems to leave viewers feeling as if they have learned a lot, that they are intellectual, with little effort on their part.

In a well-prepared presentation at our current events discussion group, a fellow resident talked about Burns’s The American Revolution. Among her points was that the history was more complex than what she was taught when in school; that the outcome may now seem inevitable, but it was not at the time; and that the American “story” is one of a journey that continues. In response to comments, she said that President Trump was only temporary and that she had great confidence in the wisdom of the American people, or at least of her grandchildren. I thought that suggesting Trump was sort of an outlier and that good-sense Americans would soon prevail missed some of the points she drew from the Burns’s documentary. Our history is complicated, but good results are not inevitable.

Unfortunately, Trump is not some outlier. Many if not most mainstream Republicans before Trump took over supported tax cuts skewed to the rich; did not support healthcare for the many; threw up scares about immigrants; opposed “wokeness”; bashed universities; bashed science; suggested there was unconstitutional discrimination against whites, especially white males; maintained that there was rampant discrimination against Christians; promoted islamophobia; and so on. Trump did not create these positions; he just said them more stridently and colorfully than other politicians.

This made me think of Timothy Egan’s, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them (2023), the story of the rise of the twentieth century Ku Klux Klan. This a story not of the deep south, but of Indiana and of D.C. Stephenson, who in effect ruled the Hoosier State in the 1920s. Stephenson did not build this new Klan by himself. Egan points out that the Klan of the 1920s was built with blessing of Protestant clergy. Stephenson, however, had abilities and shamelessness that still exist in modern demagogues. Egan tells us that D.C. Stephenson “had the touch and the charm, the dexterity with words and the drive. He understood people’s fear and their need to blame others for their failures. He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it. Small lies were for the timid. The key to telling a big lie was to do it with a conviction.”

The Klan was seeking to make America great again by returning the country to a previous time. It supported eugenics and mandatory sterilizations to limit America to the “right” kind of people that used to be the only Americans. It blessed the restrictive immigration law, the National Origins Act of 1924, which prevented the “wrong” kinds of people from entering the country. It denied the shared humanity of people, and thus the Klan opposed the teaching of evolution because evolution implies that all people had a common origin.

Stephenson’s downfall came when a brave prosecutor arrested and tried him for a horrific rape and murder. Although the disgusting evidence was clear, he still retained power because his followers “believed the trial was a hoax and witch hunt.” The true heroes were the twelve average men of the jury who convicted him leading to a life sentence.

There is much worth studying in this story. The prosecutor pointed out that “‘Stephenson forced a super oath’ on public officials. This super oath was greater than the oath of constitutional authority.” When loyalty to an individual becomes stronger than to the greater good or the constitution, society is in danger. Stephenson demonstrated that “democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled. A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage.” And our journey continues. Stephenson’s downfall was not inevitable. Because he committed a horrific crime, he was the eventual cause of his own downfall. But it took a brave prosecutor and brave jurors to make sure that downfall occurred.

As unusual as Stephenson may now seem, Timothy Egan asks the still relevant question: “What if the leaders of the 1920s Klan didn’t drive public sentiment, but rode it? A vein of hatred was always there for the tapping. It’s still there, and explains much of the madness threatening American life a hundred years after Stephenson made a mockery of the moral principles of the Heartland.”

What if Trump does not drive public sentiment but rides it? A vein of hatred will exist after Trump departs. Glass-more-than-half-full optimism about the American people and seeing Trump as an outlier will not change that. I wish I were mistaken.