11/8/16 — Review by Anne Brodie
I’d love to see the team of Periscope wielding documentarians who filmed 11/8/16 gather together the folks they interviewed on the day and night of the 2016 presidential election to see how they feel about Trump now. He’s accomplished nothing of value, he’s let down his “people” badly, alienated himself from the international community, burned bridges and normalised hatred and fascism. I can’t believe we’re using the word “fascism” to describe a thing happening in the US in 2017. Continue reading…
There’s one man gleefully talking over his wife, gloating about the greatness of Trump while she wisely sees the dangers. He is giddy with supposed power repeating all the promises Trump made to him and his pals. The there’s the family dependent on coal that hasn’t seen any improvement in their lives, just more mines shutting. There are people openly weeping in bars when Trump wins, young, idealistic people getting political for the first time — and that happens.
Rarely does a day go by that Trump hasn’t lied and is proven to have lied. He insults the disabled and Gold Star parents, gropes women and boasts about it, calls Mexicans “rapists”, turns on a dime in “creating” policy and has become a master of the blame game. He is the antithesis of Presidential.
As a Canadian I am shocked to the core by some of the philosophies expressed by some voters in 11/8/16 which also shed light on the election result. I had no idea the extent of the divide and mistrust between by the right wing me-firsts (the current malignant strain of the cult of the individual) and the left-wing. Stand your ground. Put up a wall. Send them back. Lock her up. Low grade behaviour and moral collapse is the new black. The kind of thinking that prevents humanism altogether and lessens everyone.
11/8/6 takes us back to that night of the Presidential Election of 2016, as people across the political and ideological spectrum waited for the election results. No spoiler here to say the media got it wrong, it didn’t count on certain demographics that ultimately elected Trump President, surely a major embarrassment to ABC, NBC, CNN and CBS. The film was a revelation to me, a person who lives in a country that prides itself on inclusion, complete diversity, free university tuition and healthcare. There is talk of guaranteed income, i.e. no one left behind, wherever you come from. I am officially frightened for America. It seems to be in a bad situation where there is no compromise and no one gets on my turf. Wouldn’t it be interesting to bring together the folks profiled in the doc waiting on the election results again and ask them their thoughts now, all these horrible months in? One thing is certain about this doc – it will rile you up.
