“Whether or not we hit the right notes on any given night, I think the least that we can do is not pretend to always know what to do or say.”
So begins Stephen Colbert’s touching monologue on the Oregon shootings, which centers on the act of pretending that these things won’t happen again, which in turn prevents us from changing. “I do know that one of the definitions of insanity is changing nothing, and then pretending nothing will change,” he says.
He refrains from taking a side—Colbert has been noticeably apolitical, at least in comparison to his persona from Comedy Central—but advocating for change in a public forum is still courageous in its own way. He goes on to lambaste Trump and Kevin McCarthy, maintaining the dual themes of pretense and honesty. Watch the video below: