John Oliver's show tonight — his season finale — was kinda depressing and after this terrific show last week, a letdown. He made a half-assed attempt at the argument that one big problem with this country and why we have the Big Problem heading for the White House is the preponderance of fake news. People believe what they want to believe whether it's true or not. I'm wondering if the fact-checker sites like Politifact have ever really convinced anyone that some story that seemed too good to be true wasn't true.
Anyway, read this. Basically, it's about a fake news story on a fake new website and all the people who believed it enough to spread it. I don't think Oliver made his case as well as that article does.
But I do think he was right to say that no one really knows what's in store for us from the Trump presidency. We know we won't like most of it but there will have to be some good things. A Republican Congress that said "over our dead bodies" to some good ideas of Obama's will probably pass some of the same ideas when Trump gets behind them. Because, you know, it was never about doing what was right for this country. It was about not letting the Democrat do it.
I also suspect the people who voted Trump in won't like most of what happens but will be real slow to admit that. In any case, I'm going to stop reading articles about what he might do. Since he doesn't seem to know, I don't think the pundits do.
In the meantime, I still don't like the anti-Trump protests going on around the country. Any real angry protest is going to inconvenience a lot of people and is likely to cause some destruction. If you're going to have one, at least don't put the inconvenience and destruction on people who might have had nothing to do with what you're mad about and may even have been on your side. Also, don't make your side look like hoodlums who don't respect the law, thereby giving away the moral high ground. It may be the only high ground we have left.