Eloquently stated. I always cringe when someone says Framework X is simpler than React when they really mean React+Redux+Babel+Webpack+etc. React has a very small API surface -- you can basically explain the entire framework in a few sentences -- and you probably shouldn't be jumping straight into a full enterprise stack unless you can justify the learning curve.
I got my start with React doing a "React for people who know jQuery" thing that taught me how to structure a site, props, state. Almost 3 years later and almost all my personal work is in React.