The movie did some good footage and some good moments, including Lyndon Johnson's getting the landmark Civil Rights Legislation passed; and it's heart was in the right place. But the good angels/bad angels analysis is a very superficial approach and doesn't dig very deeply into the structure of the current situation. Particularly it's bland, MOR (middle of the road) approach, where we all need to find common ground and meet in the middle (however laudable in theory) simply doesn't apply to our current situation. The film would seem to show that both sides are equally the cause of the divisiveness, when in fact one side relentlessly and ruthlessly destroys all possibility of unity with an insistence on having its own way. To properly look at our current situation would including going beyond the superficial analysis presented here and looking at things like the creation of a billionaire funded alternative mediasphere built on anger and lies, the right wing movement pushback against civil rights which started with Nixon and built up steam under dog whistle Reagan, and the neoliberal corporatist agenda which gutted the social safety net and produced historically unprecedented levels of inequality. Also, since Meachem is a historian (and some of the historical backdrop was useful, interesting and well done), it would have been helpful if he had looked further back than World War I, to some of the non-civil war divisive eras in the 18th century. The picture of some mythical unified America is more wishful thinking than anything. There have been a lot of good books written about this, in particular American Nations by. Colin Woodard and more recently, Break It Up by Richard Kreitner. We've gone so far down the rabbit hole, I'm not sure what the answer might be (other than practicing your goosestepping), but this kind of facile kumbahaying sure looks like a dead end to me.
Review of The Soul of America
