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John Oliver Decides To Explore Trump vs. The Truth Because He Doesn't Want To Cover Anything Else Ever Again

By Emily Cutler | Last Week Tonight | February 13, 2017 |

By Emily Cutler | Last Week Tonight | February 13, 2017 |


Ok, so on the one hand, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! He’s back!

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He finally came back to us!

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No more Sunday nights alone!

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So yay!

On the other hand, YOU DIDN’T ANSWER THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION, JOHN. Which is: how do you force the people who refuse to operate within the verified bounds of “reality” to accept the facts and truths of our shared existence?

Which is not to say that Oliver’s exploration of exactly how and why Trump is blatantly lying to the American public isn’t insightful or useful; it just doesn’t have the satisfying crunch of “And now we will crush the disbelievers under the boots of empirical evidence!” Because Oliver seems to give significantly more trust to the poor stupid woman on the CNN panel who believes there was widespread voter fraud. His indication seems to be that if we, the side which believes statistics and figures need to be supported by some degree of “not-being-total-bullshit,” continue to police ourselves by carefully reviewing a news story’s sources and credibility, we can eventually overwhelm the actual fake news, and bring those poor lost souls back into the light. I, in the meantime, saw someone on Facebook describe an article written by Forbes as “liberal bias fake news.” So there’s that.

And, of course, when it comes down to it, there have always been assholes who refuse to accept the legitimate reality of situations. Gay and lesbian people aren’t trying to convert our children into a homosexual lifestyle, black people don’t want to enslave white people, and women aren’t attempting to emasculate the men in their lives to turn them into lap dogs. People believe bullshit because it makes them feel better, not because it’s actually true. And for the most part, there’s not too much that we can do about it to convince them otherwise. So we just have to keep carrying on with it. No satisfying victory whenTrump admits he’s wrong, no smug feeling when Alex Jones tells you he’s lying, no finally getting your in-laws to acknowledge that the reason they voted for Trump is because actually you’re a misogynistic who doesn’t understand what an email server is let alone why it could possibly be important for the security of the U.S. Department of State, Peter! Just admit you don’t want a woman in charge!

We won’t get them to admit they’re wrong, and that sucks. But at least we’ve got facts, statistics and verifiable truths on our side.