Практика Shadowing: 2016 Stanford Commencement address by Ken Burns - Изучайте разговорный английский по видео
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Stanford University.
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Please join me in warmly welcoming our commencement speaker, Ken Burns.
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President Hennessy, members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty and staff, proud and relieved parents,
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calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings,
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ladies and gentlemen, graduating students of the class of 2016, good morning.
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I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at so momentous an occasion,
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that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day,
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especially one with such historical significance.
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One hundred and twenty-five years.
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Wow.
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Thank you, too, for that generous introduction, President Hennessey.
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I always feel compelled, though, to inoculate myself against such praise by remembering
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that I have on my refrigerator door at home an old and now faded cartoon that shows two men standing in hell,
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the flames licking up around them, and one guy says to the other, apparently my over 200 screen credits didn't mean a damn thing.
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They don't, of course.
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There is much more meaning in your accomplishments, which we memorialize today.
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I am in the business of memorializing, of history.
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It is not always a popular subject on college campuses today,
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particularly when at times it may seem to some an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit,
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particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us.
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It is my job, however, to remind people with story,
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memory, anecdote, feeling of the power our past also exerts to help us better understand what's going on now.
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It is my job to try to discern patterns
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and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying and sometimes dismaying present.
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For nearly 40 years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously maintained a conscious neutrality in my work,
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avoiding the advocacy of many of my colleagues trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens.
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Over those decades of historical documentary filmmaking, I have also come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing,
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a collection of precise dates, facts, and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known truth.
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History is a mysterious and malleable thing, constantly changing, not just as new information emerges,
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but as our own interests, emotions, and inclinations change.
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Each generation rediscovers and re-examines that part of the past, which gives its present new meaning,
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new possibility, and new power.
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The question becomes for us now, for you especially, What will we choose as our inspiration?
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Which distant events and long dead figures will provide us with the greatest help,
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the most coherent context, and the wisdom simply to go forward?
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This is in part an existential question.
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None of us get out of here alive.
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An exception will not be made in your case and you'll live forever ever.
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You can't actually design your life.
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If you want to make God laugh, the saying goes, tell her your plans.
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The hard times and vicissitudes of life will ultimately visit everyone.
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You will come to realize that you are less defined by the good things that happen to you, your moments of happiness and apparent control,
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than you are by those misfortunes and unexpected challenges
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that in fact shape you more definitively and help to solidify your true character, the measure of any human value.
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You especially know that the conversation that comes out of tragedy and injustice needs to be encouraged,
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emphasis on courage.
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It is through those conversations that we make progress.
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A mentor of mine, the journalist Tom Brokaw, recently said to me, what we learn is more important than what we set out to do.
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It's tough out there, but so beautiful too.
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And history, memory, can prepare you.
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I have a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost nine, joining our family dinner on a hot,
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sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying.
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She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months.
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But that's not what was causing her tears.
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Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors, equally struggling working people,
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had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp $20 bills, $120 in total,
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enough to keep us solvent for more than a month.
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In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories.
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That hot June evening was a victory,
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and I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments moments within the larger sweep of American history,
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trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances,
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trying to wake the dead to hear their stories.
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But how do we keep that realization of our own inevitable mortality from paralyzing us with fear?
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And how do we also keep our usual denial of this fact from depriving our lives and our actions of real meaning, of real purpose?
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This is our great human challenge, your challenge.
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This is where history can help.
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The past often offers an illuminating and clear-headed perspective from
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which to observe and reconcile the passions of the present moment just when they threaten to overwhelm us.
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The history we know, the stories we tell ourselves,
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relieve that existential anxiety, allow us to live beyond our fleeting lifespans,
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and permit us to value and love and distinguish what is important and the practice of history,
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both personal and professional, becomes a kind of conscience for us.
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As a filmmaker, as a historian, as an American, I have been drawn continually to the life and example and words of Abraham Lincoln.
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He seems to get us better than we get ourselves.
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158 years ago, in mid-June of 1858,
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Abraham Lincoln, running in what would be a failed bid for the United States Senate, at a time of bitter partisanship in our national politics,
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almost entirely over the issue of slavery, spoke to the Republican State Convention in the Illinois State House in Springfield.
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His political party, the Republican Party, was brand new, born barely four years before,
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with one single purpose in mind, to end the intolerable hypocrisy of chattel slavery
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that still existed in a country promoting certain unalienable rights to itself and the world.
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He said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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A house divided against itself cannot stand.
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Four and a half years later, he was president, presiding over a country in the midst of the worst crisis in American history,
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our Civil War, giving his annual message to Congress, what we now call the State of the Union.
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The State of the Union was not good.
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His house was divided.
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But he also saw the larger picture.
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The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
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The occasion is piled high with difficulty, he said, and we must rise with the occasion.
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As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.
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We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." And then he went on,
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"'Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
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The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.
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We say we are for union.
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The world will not forget that we say this.
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We know how to save the Union.
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In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.
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Honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve,
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we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of Earth.
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You are that latest generation he was metaphorically speaking about, and you are, whether you are yet aware of it or not,
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charged with saving our union.
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The stakes are slightly different than the ones Lincoln faced.
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There is not yet armed rebellion, but they are just as high.
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And before you go out and try to live and shape the rest of your life, you are required now to rise,
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as Lincoln implored us, with the occasion.
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You know, it's terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save,
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to blame it for all the ills known to humankind.
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And my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, let's be honest, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes.
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But you would be hard pressed to find in all of human history a greater force for good.
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From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th,
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14th, 15th, and Women 19th Amendments, to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts,
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from the Transcontinental Railroad and our National Parks to Child Labor Laws, Social Security, and the National Labor Relation Acts,
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from the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway System to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act,
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the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives.
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But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle,
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you You are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket,
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and the chief culprit is our evil government.
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Part of the reason this kind of criticism sticks is
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because we live in an age of social media where we are constantly assured that we are all independent, free agents.
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But that free agency is essentially unconnected to real community,
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divorced from civic engagement, duped into believing in our own lonely primacy by a sophisticated media culture that requires you know,
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desperately needs you to live in an all-consuming disposable present, wearing the right blue jeans,
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driving the right car, carrying the right handbag, eating at all the right places,
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blissfully unaware of the historical tides that have brought us to this moment,
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blissfully uninterested in where those tides might take us.
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Our spurious sovereignty is reinforced and perpetually underscored to our obvious and great comfort,
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but this kind of existence actually ingrains in us a stultifying sameness that rewards conformity,
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not courage, ignorance and anti-intellectualism, not critical thinking.
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This wouldn't be so bad if we were just wasting our own lives, but this year our political future depends on it,
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and there comes a time when I
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and you can no longer remain neutral silent we must speak up
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and speak out for 216 years our elections though bitterly contested have featured the philosophies
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and characters of candidates who were clearly qualified that is not the case this year
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One is glaringly not qualified.
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So before you do anything with your well-earned degree,
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you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process,
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divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion,
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the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much malign but subtle art of governance.
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Who is against lots of things but doesn't seem to be for anything,
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offering only bombastic and contradictory promises and terrifying Orwellian statesman.
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A person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn't seem to matter,
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who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment.
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who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicap, denigrates women, immigrants, and all Muslims,
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a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy
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and the Ku Klux Klan, an infantile, bullying man who,
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depending on his mood is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties, and long-standing relationships.
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I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared
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and they feel powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that,
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as often happens on TV,
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A one can be waived and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions.
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They can't.
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It is a political Ponzi scheme.
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And asking this man to assume the highest office in the
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land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
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As a student of history, I recognize this type.
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He emerges everywhere and in all eras.
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We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism,
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a nativist, anti-immigrant, know-nothingism, a disrespect for the judiciary,
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the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies.
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African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line.
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Voter suppression gleefully promoted.
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Jingoistic saber rattling.
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A total lack of historical awareness.
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A political paranoia that predictably points fingers, always making the other wrong.
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These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past,
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but they now loom in front of us again, all happening at once.
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We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires.
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We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires.
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The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life is eroding fast,
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spurred along and amplified by an amoral internet
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that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
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We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or balance or even bemused disdain.
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Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan,
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torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers.
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In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves,
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so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior.
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Hey, he's rich, he must be doing something right.
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He's not.
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Edward R.
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Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago.
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He is an insult to our history.
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And do not be deceived by his momentary good behavior.
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It's only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.
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And do not think that the tragedy in Orlando underscores his points.
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It does not.
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We must disenthrall ourselves, as Abraham Lincoln said, from the culture of violence and guns, and then we shall save our country.
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This, ladies and gentlemen, is not a liberal or conservative issue, a red state, blue state divide.
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This is an American issue.
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Many honorable people, including the last two Republican presidents, members of the party of Abraham Lincoln,
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have declined to support him.
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And I implore those Vichy Republicans who have endorsed him to please, please reconsider.
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We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization and reject the troubling,
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unfiltered Tourette's of his tribalism.
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The next few months of your commencement, that is to say your future, will be critical to the survival of the Republic.
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The occasion is piled high with difficulty.
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Let us pledge here today
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that we will not let this happen to the exquisite yet deeply flawed land we all love
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and cherish and hope to leave intact to our posterity.
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Let us nobly save, not meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth.
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Let me speak directly to the graduating class.
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Watch out, here comes the advice.
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Look, I am the father of four daughters.
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If someone tells you they've been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them.
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Maybe someday we will make the survivor's elegant statement, as important as Dr. King's letter from a Birmingham jail.
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OK, try not to make the other wrong, as I just did with the presumptive nominee.
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Be for something.
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Be curious, not cool.
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Feed your soul, too, every day.
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Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all, not just presidential candidates.
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Don't confuse success with excellence.
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The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that careerism is death.
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Do not descend too deeply into specialism either.
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Educate all of your parts.
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You will be healthier.
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Free yourself from the limitations of the binary world.
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It is just a tool, a means, not an end.
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Seek out and have mentors.
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Listen to them.
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The late theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie once said, we are looking for ideas large enough to be afraid of again.
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Embrace those new ideas.
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Bite off more than you can chew.
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Travel.
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Do not get stuck in one place.
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Visit our national parks.
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Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own atomic insignificance, as one observer noted.
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But in the inscrutable ways of nature, You will feel larger, inspirited,
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just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard.
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Insist on heroes and be one.
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Read.
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The book is still the greatest man-made machine of all.
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Not the car, not the TV, not the smartphone.
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Make babies.
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One of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry,
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I mean really worry about someone other than yourself.
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It is liberating and exhilarating, I promise.
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Ask your parents.
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Do not lose your enthusiasm.
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In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, God in us.
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Serve your country.
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Insist that we fight the right wars.
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Convince your government, as Lincoln knew, that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land.
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always forget that.
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Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts.
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They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country.
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They just make our country worth defending.
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Believe, believe, as Arthur Miller told me in an interview for my very first film on the Brooklyn Bridge,
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believe that maybe you too could add something that would last and be beautiful. And vote.
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indelibly underscore your citizenship and our connection to each other when you do.
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Good luck and Godspeed.
Сценарий: Выступление Кена Бернса на выпускном собрании Стэнфорда
Этот видеоматериал — отличная возможность практиковаться в воспроизведении естественной речи на английском. Вы услышите эмоциональное выступление, где смешиваются официальная речь, личные анегдоты и размышления о истории. Такая смесь поможет вам научиться чувствовать ритм и интонацию разных стилей английского, что критически важно для улучшения произношения английского.
Полезные выражения и словосочетания
- "Momentous occasion" — важное событие (идеально для описания праздников или выпускных)
- "Ferocious urgency" — острая необходимость (хорошо для выражения срочности в повседневной или деловой речи)
- "Vicissitudes of life" — перемены судьбы (широко используется в литературе и разговорной речи)
- "Incipient proto-fascism" — зарождающийся протофашизм (для обсуждения политических тем)
- "Spurious sovereignty" — мнимое суверенитет (полезно в философских или социальных дискуссиях)
Ваше задание на shadowing: Проведите 5 минут!
Выберите отрывок из видео длиной 30 секунд (лучше с личным анегдотом Кена Бернса о его маме). Включите запись, послушайте внимательно, затем повторите после спикера, пытаясь точно повторять интонацию, паузы и темп. Это техника shadowing английский, которая быстро улучшает ваше произношение и чувство языка. Если вы застряли, используйте метод shadowspeak — повторяйте фразы сразу после спикера, не останавливая запись. Практикуйте ежедневно, и через неделю вы заметите прогресс! Учить английский по видео никогда не было так эффективно.
Что такое техника Shadowing?
Shadowing — это научно обоснованная техника изучения языка, изначально разработанная для подготовки профессиональных переводчиков и популяризированная полиглотом доктором Александром Аргуэльесом. Метод прост, но эффективен: вы слушаете аудио на английском от носителей языка и немедленно повторяете вслух — как тень, следующая за говорящим с задержкой в 1–2 секунды. В отличие от пассивного прослушивания или грамматических упражнений, Shadowing заставляет мозг и мышцы рта одновременно обрабатывать и воспроизводить реальные речевые паттерны. Исследования показывают, что это значительно улучшает точность произношения, интонацию, ритм, связную речь, понимание на слух и беглость речи — что делает его одним из самых эффективных методов для подготовки к IELTS Speaking и реального общения на английском.