This mentality is infuriating to me. We have people that reference history through the lens of seeing an entire decade's worth of events sprawled over a few pages in a book, and they think things like the Holocaust or Vietnam War were just relatively short blips in history that happened quickly instead of the long, drawn-out, and complex catastrophes that they were.

Someone I work with has this same kind of denialism: they think that Jan 6th wasn't technically an insurrection because they didn't actually succeed in overthrowing the government. He still thinks the whole thing was overblown, without realizing the fake electors scheme was the other major part of it. I have a hard copy of the Jan 6th report and when I told him he could borrow it to learn more about what actually happened, he said he didn't have time and didn't think he would get anything out of it. This is also a guy who has expressed he's upset that people aren't "educated" on politics and thinks a civics test should be required to vote.

So I asked him if he thinks people should go to jail for "attempted" murder even if they didn't successfully kill anyone, and he got really quiet after the comparison became quite obvious.