You make it sound like this documentary is somehow akin to a natural event, as though it were a shower of rain you got in while you were out walking, rather than a constructed artefact. Someone had to collate and edit all that footage and the person or persons who did it of necessity at least had a subjective opinion and quite likely an agenda. It sounds as though they've been rather clever at concealing thier motives and intentions, if you were able to come away not having noticed what they were.
 

Have you not considered the option that the director (who isn’t American) had an agenda of “let’s make a good documentary”, rather than a US political agenda? Would you have questioned his agenda if he had done a nature documtary?
 

Bhagpuss, every video made by mankind is not a natural event, as in the maker has intentions, at least the one to make a video.

That is trivial, and as such it can be assumed that everyone, including Tobold, knows this.

But thanks for the effort, anyway.
 

The right denying any responsibility for January 6 and the left trying to paint it as a coup d’etat contrasts with a much more mundane reality of a protest action that was clearly planned and to some extent staged which then ran out of control.

"Mundane reality" sort of glosses over the precipice we were, in fact, hanging over that day. You don't have to necessarily believe the deeper conspiracy of whether Mike Pence's Secret Service detail was coordinating with Trump's (and the Oath Keepers/Proud Boys) in trying to get him removed from the Capitol. What you cannot dispute is that had Mike Pence left the area (i.e. gotten into the Secret Service car), Chuck Grassley would have presided over the certification of votes. And he could have sent the election back to the House delegations, of which there were more Republicans. End of democracy.
 

“Could have” is extremely weak. Aliens could have landed. Other checks and balances could have worked. But what is very, very obvious is that in as far as there was a plan at all, Trump had counted on Pence to do what he wanted. As he had previously counted on the Supreme Court that he had stacked for this purpose. None of these plans worked, which shows that American democracy is somewhat more robust than you think. I think the worst case scenario here would have been prolonged legal battles, with ultimately the same outcome. Trump might wish he was Kim Jong-un, but he doesn’t have the same support system for a personality cult in place, not even in his own party.
 

Tobold, you sound like the apologists who said that Roe v. Wade is settled law, and nobody would overturn it.

Until the prospective supreme court justices lied during their confirmation hearings and went ahead and overturned it anyway.
 

@Redbeard: As a centrist, I always sound like a member of the opposite party to any extremist. Bad things happened on January 6th, and Trump is responsible: He assembled and provoked an angry mob and sent them to the Capitol. But his plan was very much in the open: Put pressure on Mike Pence, because Trump was delusional in thinking that Pence could actually do anything about the election. The plan was delusional, reckless, and stupid. But as far as “coup d’etat” go, this one must rank even below the bay of pigs invasion in cleverness and chance to succeed.

It is to the political advantage of the Democrats to make these events sound a lot more dangerous than they were, “the end of democracy”. And it is to the political advantage of the Democrats to paint all Republicans with the same brush and pretend they were in with it. But the facts are that Trump wanted to overturn the election, and all the Republicans with any power he asked to do it said no: Kemp said no, Pence said no, the Republican Supreme Court said no. The people who supported Trump in his efforts were a sad bunch of clowns like Guiliani and Lindell. American Democracy, in all instances that were tried, was very much able to withstand this attack. Trump basically got laughed out of court. Recounts confirmed he had lost. He went way past the point where pretending to have won was of political advantage to himself. If the Democrats can’t win the 2024 election against Trump, that would say a lot more about the state of the Democratic party than about the politicial “genius” of Trump.
 

I live in Trump country. Unlike previous years, such as the Reagan years, people are openly flying flags and wearing clothing with slogans about killing their opposition, so reading characterizations that "they're inept" doesn't change the reality that there's enough people out there who want it to happen to make it a reality.

 

@Redbeard: Agreed. And if you look at previous posts of mine, I’ve been predicting political violence for some time.

However, the polarization of America, and in how far Trump is responsible for it is a different question. It has nothing to do with the documentary I was blogging about. And even if we agree that Trump is bad, I don’t think that would be justification to make documentaries about him that are just a bunch of lies. Truth has an inherent value, even if it doesn’t fit your preferred political narrative.

And the ineptness of Trump is important, because it is pretty easy to see how a successor could do better.

The documentary showed the Trump team using “make liberals cry again” as a campaign slogan. I think the Democrats are doing themselves a disservice by not considering why this would be a slogan that works on an average American. You know, the guy without a college degree (regardless of the color of his skin), who sees “student debt relief” as a transfer of money from the poor to people already doing better than him. It is really too bad that the only people in the Democratic party who still remember “it’s the economy, stupid!” are old foggies like Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich. The Democrats could have a runaway success by concentrating on fighting for higher wages in this cost of living crisis. Instead they are looking like an well-educated elite shoveling more money into their own pockets at the expense of the working class. Populism exploits anger, but that anger is based on something real, and that is more often than not the economic conditions of the working people.
 

Trump is a symptom of a cancer that's been embedded in the American Political system for decades.

In a way we got lucky Trump and his inner circle were so inept that they couldn't do as much damage to the country as they could have.

The truly scary part of the Trump presidency is the lesson politicians learned.

The next Republican that can successfully gather Trumps base yet actually put together a competent inner circle can truly send America back 80 years of social and economic progress.
 

@ Bigeye I could not agree more, Trump is a narcissistic moron, but he paved the way for a future populist's that is more capable (on either left or right)

Just as Sulla and Maruis showed the next generation (Caesar, Pompei, Crassus ) History doesn't repeat, but it can rhyme.