WTF?

Like the World War II term, SNAFU, the title of this post is an acronym that cannot be translated in mixed company. Anyone familiar with the internet will no doubt be familiar with the expression, generally used when a comrade says something off the wall that makes you scratch your head in exasperation wondering what the heck he's talking about. Or to quote an oft-used clip of legendary NFL football coach Vince Lombardi, as he prowls the sidelines during a Packers game, "what the hell is going on around here?"



What indeed is going on in our world today? The economy is in recession, and while getting the government to even admit to this economic reality is as difficult as getting Steny Hoyer (or is it Stony Heyer, I always forget) and Nancy Pelosi to do anything significant in Congress, once they finally acknowledge the fact of a downturn, the response is underwhelming. The plan of action, an income surge, putting anywhere between a couple to five hundred dollars into people's wallets in hopes that somehow this will alleviate all that ails our financial house.



How about the war in Iraq? It's going pretty well right? At least that's what the government tells us, and hey, if the generals say it's so, it must be. I wonder what would happen if "the generals" met "the terrorists" head on in a dark alley, maybe we could get this whole ordeal over with and come up with the next boogeyman to whip the public into a frenzy over. But I digress, how about that Iraqi war, the wmd, the democracy spreading throughout the Middle East, the rose petals at our feet symolic of the good will that America is getting around the globe. Oh, well how about the fact that the Sunnis who once tried to kill us are now helping us kill the Shiites, or is it Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or the Kurds, or whoever the hell we are trying to kill or prevent from being killed over there this week. I use the term we and us loosely, because of course it's really the soldiers and their families that are feeling the effects of this war and the forgotten one in Afghanistan. So now we are in the business of rebuilding Iraqi cities and training their police force, cajoling their politicos to reconcile differences in the name of a national unity that never existed. All the while residents of New Orleans continue to live in 200 square foot FEMA trailers and wait for the government to figure out it's next move. WTF indeed.



I could go on about misuse of government power, violations of civil liberties on a scale probably not seen since the Civil War, and the current presidential election, which was focused on the war for about 15 minutes until the public lost interest and started focusing on their 401K's and home equity lines, and the battles between the two front-runners that have left both looking small and very politics as usual. But why bother, it is what it is, and no amount of crying in the wilderness will change anything. Yet one has to wonder, what the hell is going on around here, and are we as a nation and a society ever going to turn the ship around or are we well on our way to the decline and fall of our empire? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, we could use a leader like Lombardi prowling the sidelines right about now, ripping some heads off, chewing some backsides, and getting things done the right way.