Review

New Leftist Documentary ‘The Reunited States’ Ignores Divisiveness On The Left To Promote BLM And Condemn White Privilege

   DailyWire.com
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 01: U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters attends the Women's Media Center 2018 Women's Media Awards at Capitale on November 1, 2018 in New York City.
Gary Gershoff/Getty Images

“The Reunited States” is even more disingenuous than President Joe Biden’s plea for unity.

The documentary, presumably an attempt to heal a fractured nation, delivers a relentless assault on our two-party system. The film hails independent thinkers, early and often, insisting the political system is broken beyond repair.

The solution? Embracing Black Lives Matter, white privilege claims and renouncing the country’s founding principles.

Oh, and “The Reunited States” also spins for an independent candidate who got crushed not once, but twice, in major elections. That’s despite the film’s insistence the races in question were “too close to call.”

The biggest takeaway? To come together we must reshape the nation along hard-left principles. Unite or else, as today’s Democrats might say. 

If this doesn’t end up being the worst documentary of 2021, it’s clearly the most dishonest.

The story follows four different narratives, but the Leavertons are the main attraction. He’s David Leaverton, a former GOP strategist who quit politics to see how he can better help his country. He’s joined by his wife, Erin, and their three adorable kids.

The family hits the road on their massive bus (what privilege!) to visit all 50 states and learn why we’re at each other’s throats. 

We also get to know Steven Olikara, the founder of the Millennial Action Project (MAP). His group gathers young politicians from both sides of the aisle because younger is always better, or so the movie tells us. 

Olikara’s heart genuinely appears to be in the right place, but we never learn more about his work beyond stale sounds bites and kumbaya platitudes.

Susan Bro, the Virginia mom whose daughter, Heather Heyer, died during the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right Rally,” serves as the emotional heart of the film.

Least of all is Greg Orman, a platitude-spouting independent who ran two unsuccessful campaigns but otherwise is the country’s best hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Or so we’re told.

Bro’s story is heart breaking, and an early sequence where a first responder tells her about trying to help Heyer in her final minutes is a cinematic gut punch.

It’s all downhill from that powerful sequence.

“The Reunited States” aggressively ignores many of the forces pitting American against American today. Social media, where hate and misinformation run wild, gets a pass. So does the mainstream media, which gets rich off dividing us with Fake News and obfuscation.

Late night comics, who spend their monologues savaging half the nation, never get a mention. Nor do politicians who incite violence, like Rep. Maxine Waters who famously said, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

“The Reunited States” ends up being a vanity project for the Leavertons, who spend so much time in front of the camera it would make Michael Moore blush. They’re so full of white guilt the movie demands an IMAX screen to capture it all.

“It’s cool to see our kids wrap their minds around injustice,” Erin Leaverton says, referring to children who look to be between 2 and 6 years of age.

The family sees “The Reunited States” as their way of atoning for their white privilege sins.

“I went on this journey trying to figure out what’s causing the problem, and I found out I’m part of the problem,” Erin Leaverton confesses. “It exposed something in myself that I didn’t wanna see, that’s deeply rooted in all of us. The belief that certain people have more value than others.” 

Speak for yourself, please.

“It has been hard for me to come to terms with the darkness that lies within side of me, that darkness judges people before I meet them,” David Leaverton says. “That’s a hard thing to face.”

The film showcases several black Americans confessing their distrust for white people. These moments are portrayed as all the more reason to embrace BLM, implying that they’re right to feel the way they do … by judging people by their skin, not the content of their character.

Bro’s journey is more complex. She’s trying to turn her daughter’s death into a moment of healing, but to do so she spouts BLM talking points.

“My kids grew up being called ‘trailer trash,’ but that isn’t what White Privilege is about,” she explains.

Huh?

We also meet the mother of a black man killed by the police, another example of the country’s inherent injustice. If you Google the story in question, the slain man had stolen stereos in his car at the time of the shooting, and an assistant prosecutor found the officer acted in self defense after the man tried to hit him with his car.

In short, the case is far more complicated than the film suggests.

We even hear a few horrifying stories of illegal immigrants fleeing violence back home, a not so subtle way of pushing yet another progressive principle — open borders.

Not convinced? The film shows Erin Leaverton looking sorrowfully at a border fence to make sure the point lands.

Beyond the film’s inherent dishonesty, “The Reunited States” is hopelessly flat. The film ends short of the 90 minute mark but squanders much of that running time. We see fawning images of the Leavertons, generic moments tied to the MAP and fawning Orman sound bites from his immediate family.

How revealing.

Liberal pundit Van Jones and right-leaning “View” co-host Meghan McCain apparently joined the project late as executive producers, adding their combined gravitas to the documentary. Jones did far more for the country’s reconciliation by appearing in “No Safe Spaces” to defend free speech.

“The Reunited States” is so tone deaf it can’t spare a syllable for how conservatives are being de-platformed in our digital age, a problem that predates the recent wave of Big Tech censorship.

It’s possible the documentary wrapped before the creative team could adequately address the subject. Chances are if they re-shot “The Reunited States” today, they’d leave it out entirely.

It doesn’t fit the film’s narrative.

David Leaverton all but admits he’s a Democrat now. His wife shares an equally obtuse confession.

“I’ll never vote for a Republican or Democrat again. I’ll vote for a human being who I resonate with,” she says, a virtue signal that can be seen from space.

Bro even confronts David Leaverton, saying his work as a GOP strategist makes him partially responsible for her daughter’s death.

That kind of overheated rhetoric, despite coming from a grieving mom, is one more reason we’re as divided as we are. 

“The Reunited States” misses that irony by a country mile.

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