SNAFU! The state of the affairs of the world.

After finishing my half-a-pot of morning coffee, and watching three different networks spout their morning drivel, I can summarize the state of the world as;

SNAFU

This is an old phrase, that I first heard when I was in the NAVY.

It was and I assume is still used by people in the military to describe how things were going in their unit or just the military in general.

You see, when you go into the military, you soon learn that a lot of the decisions someone made and passed down to you for implementation, just don’t make much sense.

Of course, later, working in the corporate world, it turned out to be the same.

Stupid decisions being made by the unknowing that affected those that worked for them.

Anyway, SNAFU stands for;

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up!

When I was a kid, they (the adults of my world) had us preparing for the big one, which was supposed to be a bomb dropped mysteriously by some dark and evil fat general from Russia onto my school. Come on, if you’re old enough, you’ll remember these “drills” yourself.

They were truly stupid drills and if a bomb, nuclear or otherwise, was actually dropped on our school; our hiding under a cheap school desk, or crawling into a shallow ditch, and then covering our heads with our arms, was not much more effective than the other,much more realistic, old military adage I learned back then;

If a bomb has been dropped on you, then you should bend over, grab both cheeks and kiss your Ass goodbye.

This would have been at least as effective in saving my life as crawling into some ditch as I waited for the shock wave to blow me into the next county.

Anyway, nobody dropped any bombs, all of us kids were duly scared out of our pants about the dreaded “bomb” as we dutifully crawled under yet another chewing gum laden desk.

So today I, and I assume my fellow citizens who lived through the “Cold War” era, sit and watch the news on our TV’s as different nations drop bombs on each other, shoot down each other’s planes, threaten each other with revenge driven attacks, even cutting innocent people’s heads off (on video, of course), and we tend to, well, yawn.

That’s right, we yawn!

Oh sure, we care!

We care about the dead, the hungry, the maimed, and Hell, we even try to think nice thoughts about the radical and insane alike as they give live interviews from behind sandbags manufactured in China, distributed by US companies with a thousand percent markup, which are then stolen by the locals and sold to supporters of the deadly conflicts going on around the world.

But you see, to us, its just another day of SNAFU’s.

Our news media gives us instantaneous coverage of a person getting shot by a “radical” in say, England, and then they go to a train wreck in the steepes of Russia that has killed dozens.

After four or five minutes of commercials, they return and cover yet another march in some city or town in the US.

Then they come back and show us how to cook a Turkey, or Pizza or some other handy food preparation method they can fill the dead air time with.

After the Turkey thing has been finished, its time to fade into another four or five minutes of commercials, and then back to the Russians, or the ISIS idiots, or the mess in Syria, or a group of African tribal radicals kidnapping young girls and blowing up shopping malls.

If things are still slow, they’ll cover the shocking new dress worn by the wife of the President of France to a party last night, as they search the web for something, anything, they can use to hold our attention.

Yep, if you ask me how things are going in the world on this day, I’ll respond to you with;

SNAFU, and then go make another pot of coffee.

by Don Bobbitt, November 2015