Do not underestimate how important his final message really is.
Watch the clip first ...
... and then consider ... that for decades ... perhaps forever ... we've been sold a dangerously misleading story ... of personal responsibility over all else.
The value of satire is not to influence how people behave ... it's to influence how leaders behave.
There's lots that's been/being written about Jimmy Kimmel and yes, Trump's juvenile insecurity is the kind of petrol that engulfs whole societies in the flames of authoritarianism, so America is right to be terrified...
... but I slid into your feed for a different reason... because Jon Stewart's point runs deeper.
His point about satire influencing leaders rather than people fits a pattern of rhetoric which correlates to the rise of authoritarianism throughout history.
The people are not responsible for the direction of democracy - they are passengers to the will of a tiny cabal of leaders of industry.
It doesn't matter how judiciously you separate your recycling - ocean life will still die out under the weight of microplastics.
You can try your best to make wise choices in the supermarket but you and your kids will still get overweight and die from preventable, diet-related disease.
Change your electricity provider if you must but the world will still cook on the alter of endless oil consumption.
And sure, read the right papers, rail at the same headlines and I can promise that Gazans will still be cleansed from their lands and Putin will still escalate on the western flanks of Europe.
You and I are not - in the end - in control.
From Cicero to Trump, social mobility and influence is an illusion. Real mobility is fleetingly rare: a fairy tale told to convince us that we too could change the world if only we wished hard enough ... It's no different to the illusion of saving the turtles by putting our Evian bottle in a different bin.
What is happening today ... the precipitous lurch to the right here in the UK, in the US and across what remains of the democratic states ... is the beginning of the end of the illusion.
Wealth and power will always protect itself. It always has. Through world wars, colonialism, slavery, medieval fealty right back to Rome and beyond ... wealth has never really changed hands ... it hasn't distributed ... it hasn't evened out.
Our system of occasionally balloted democracy is part of that system of protection, invented by the system as a means of regulation and coercion. Part of the illusion.
We don't ever get to actually vote for policy detail, we don't get to chose regulation, we don't control industry, drive out exploitation, moderate taxation or choose anything that would meaningfully enable the social mobility or the economic equity that we are forever promised is just around the corner ...
... we only ever get to cast one vote for a ludicrously limited selection of near-identical parties or leaders ...
... and while they might make promises, they need not keep them because in the end they are all funded by the same small group of industry leaders determined to protect their position ...
... and once in government they all must bend the knee the bond markets - a system of absolute institutional inertia as old as time - above all else.
For as long as most people believe that they have would have power to change things if only they mustered the will or skill to do so ... nothing will change.
In fact, it seems clear to me we really only have two choices:
absolute, permanent subservience to the self-preserving power of the institutional wealth of a minuscule group families who control our natural resources (oil and media, above all else) and industry ...
… or …an absolute reset of our system of governance and leadership selection ... the rigorous regulation of industry and the total dissolution of the international debt system that will otherwise stifle any meaningful change to humanity for centuries to come.
It might feel alarmist to put your choices in such stark contrast ... and perhaps people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ... or perhaps that phrase simply exists to prevent change.
What I will say is that if you really thing there's a middle ground then you're lying to yourself ... and I challenge you to spell out what you think that middle ground is ... because I don't think you can.
And if you don't have the stomach for choice two ... then I'm sorry but you're basically choosing choice one.
It's that simple.
