What if a documentary was made to bridge the divide between conservatives and liberals, and it only showed the conservative perspective, while liberals are asked to just listen? And what if the only people to show up to watch the documentary were liberals? That was my experience at the movies last night.

Last night, the Morris Theater was a host for the 3rd annual Better Together film festival. This is an event in which theaters all around the country are encouraged to show documentaries that encourage communication between conflicting groups — it’s supposed to heal the polarization that is so strong right now.

That’s a high-minded goal, and I agree that communication is absolutely important. I was a little concerned about that “listen first” idea, though. If everyone listens first, won’t we all just be sitting silently, looking at each other? Or is the unstated intent really for one side to shut up and listen to the other? Maybe this could be done in some way, I don’t know how, to get both sides to respect the other’s perspective, but there’s an awful lot of ill will in the country that isn’t going to be reconciled with a movie.

Also, The Minnesota Council of Churches is one sponsor of this event, which puts me on high alert already.

Churches have only rarely been builders of peace — just look at the Middle East right now, where religions are excuses for violent bloody rebellion and genocide. Is this film festival propaganda for lies?

But let’s give them a choice. The Morris Theater was showing a documentary called The [Conserv]atives, for free, and invited everyone in town to come, and promised a post-movie discussion between community members. I didn’t like the gimmicky title — how do you pronounce that, open-square-bracket conserv close-square-bracket atives? And if you don’t include the brackets, it’s just pronounced “Conservatives”, as if it’s just about one side. I guess my worry that the theme here was for one side to shut up and listen was valid.

So I showed up for this movie, to give it a chance. Here’s how the theater advertised it:

It’s a documentary about conservation, the environment, and climate change, told entirely from the perspective of four Republicans. Fortunately for my sanity, these are four Republicans who take the rational position that climate change is real, caused by humans, and is a serious threat that must be addressed.

One is an activist who is trying to build a climate coalition within the Republican party. We see tiny little meetings, poorly attended, surrounded by protesters who accuse him of being a Republican in name only and claim that climate change is a hoax.

Another is the mayor of Miami, who recognizes that the changing climate is a threat to his city. He doesn’t seem to be doing much, other than posturing for candidacy to president of the US.

The third is a preacher AND climatologist, although suspiciously, they don’t present her credentials for calling herself a climatologist. I’ll accept it as given, just like I accept her qualifications to speak for god. She mainly is shown promoting a religious perspective.

The final conservative is an Iowa farmer, who actually seems to be doing something, teaching people about soil conservation and cover crops. He’s the only one of the four I could actually respect, because he was taking a pragmatic approach to a real problem.

The documentary bounces about between those four, showing that they are sincerely concerned about climate change and are talking to their Republican colleagues about environmental issues. Good for them. But the problem is that this is an unrepresentative sliver of the conservative movement — the documentarians had to stretch to find a small minority who are sensible on climate change, and we just pretend the majority, who are batshit delusional, don’t exist.

Further, they had to be very specific on their topic. They only talk about the environment, and studiously avoid any other Republican issue. I guess that’s fine, to tune the movie to their chosen topic, but all the other issues are also relevant.

The question I had in my mind, that was never asked, was, “OK, you’re genuinely concerned about the environment. So why are you a Republican, a party that has openly declared war on the environment and denies the existence of climate change? What makes you identify with a party hostile to your goals?”

Because that’s the missing piece of the puzzle. What is there in the Republican party that warrants rescuing them from their folly about the environment? There’s got to be a hidden motivation. Maybe they hate immigrants, or the gays, or want to wage war on foreign countries, or are fans of the bogus great replacement theory. Or maybe they have a misplaced dedication to tradition, and are Republicans because their grandparents were. Or they believe all Democrats are godless commies (they aren’t, you know — Democrats love money as much as Republicans do.) We aren’t told. We’re supposed to sympathize with these four on one single issue, and pretend all the baggage they carry doesn’t exist.

As you might guess, I despised this feeble attempt at namby-pamby, middle-of-the-road appeasement of wretched conservative Republicans. I have my own idea of how we should respond to these parasites.

This film festival wasn’t even effective in its conciliatory goals. About a dozen people turned out for the showing last night. Every single one of them was a liberal. Not one single Republican showed up to “listen,” even for a documentary that was entirely sympathetic to the Republicans.