Just to be completely clear... you do not need React just so you can turn JSON into HTML. HTMX can 100% can do that.

You're argument is fine assuming you wish to become another react frontend in a sea of react frontends.

But the documentation example is a terrible argument, the benefit of HTMX is it is easy to understand what is actually happening. There is no magic, you don't need to dive through millions of lines of code to figure out what this is doing like react. It's very basic javascript. Just read the library, frankly you don't even need any documentation. Just take 15 mins and read the entire library.