It happened on one of them Zip-a-dee-doo-dah days
Good ol’ Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah — a nickname that came to mind while describing the erratic behavior of a former colleague. I was really just thinking about how she zips through every discussion.
A lot of that goin’ around
I didn’t know at the time just how true to form the moniker would become. And as with The Fraudulent 5 that came before her — and those that followed, she railroaded the wrong guy: You Are A Liar: America in the Age of Unenlightenment.
Like my malignantly narcissistic manager Rollo Tomassi in Letter of the Law — this is how Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah considers criticism of any kind:
These comfort-seeking types confine their convictions to the narrowest scope possible — as victory lies in the vacuum of how they see themselves.
They fabricate reasons to outright reject what’s really being said — warping reality to manufacture their own.
A lot of that goin’ around too
The kids skipping to the tune of “Everything is ‘satisfactch’ll’” attitude of contentment — syncs with the self-absorbed culture we created.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin’ my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!
Mister Bluebird’s on my shoulder
It’s the truth, it’s “actch’ll”
Everything is “satisfactch’ll”
Putting the angelic nature of it aside, the song is simply a caricature of how I see America being butchered to death by bullshit — an unyielding faith in baseless beliefs that’s beyond anything I could have imagined in my youth.
Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.
It’s the truth, it’s “actch’ll”
Everything is “satisfactch’ll” . . .
Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works . . .
Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth . . .
We get rewarded by hearts, likes, thumbs-up — and we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth.
My generation got off easy, as all we were called to do was weigh information. But even that was too much of a burden.
As we got more, we became less
“You see us as you want to see us — in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.”
We didn’t learn a damn thing from our beloved Breakfast Club — as America has become increasingly crippled by seeing people in the “simplest terms” and “most convenient definitions.”
Nice work
Does that look like a country capable of greatness to you?
One Voice Became Two 