In Trump’s America, it’s SNAFU all the time

During the Second World War, soldiers coined a phrase, later abbreviated to an acronym, which in turn entered the English language as a word unto itself: Situation Normal, All F***ed Up.

SNAFU implied a constant wrong-trackedness, a perennial state of things not right. These days, we don’t think twice about talking of “a snafu.”

It seems to me, however, that as a noun, the word loses its force. It makes more sense as an adjective, or in rare cases even a verb, describing events that each in their own right ought to be considered extraordinary or infamous, but in the current moment just become part of the background noise.

In the reality show Trump era, it is a perfect word to describe the perilous coarsening of our political discourse, and the day-by-day calcification of our collective moral nerve endings.

Some examples from just the last few weeks:

How SNAFU that the president and much of his family are, apparently, vastly proficient in tax fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, as detailed in the recent New York Times exposé.

So very SNAFU that virtually every GOP senator voted to confirm to the Supreme Court a vitriolic, hyper-partisan man who, even without the presence of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault, ought to have been voted down for espousing dangerous, extremist views on executive power – and that the president stands up in front of a crowd in Mississippi and mocks a woman who has publicly and painfully testified that she was sexually assaulted.

Infuriatingly SNAFU, not to mention Orwellian, that the Environmental Protection Agency has now become pollution central, and that the agencies that could mitigate climate change before it does irreparable damage – as the U.N. says it soon will – are actively promoting polices that make it worse.

Isn’t it SNAFU that the government, in our names, takes young immigrant kids and locks them up in tent cities in the desert and parades unaccompanied toddlers before immigration court judges?

What a SNAFU state of affairs that the feds are suing California to overturn the state’s net neutrality law so as to make non-neutrality the law of the land.

So totally SNAFU to have a president call a press conference, notice a Kurdish journalist and call on “Mr. Kurd” to ask a question. And, in that same press conference, Donald Trump declares that he won the votes of 52 percent of women in 2016 when, in fact, he won 52 percent of white women’s votes – the clear implication being, in this statement, that only white voters really count.

How SNAFU that we’re now so inured to Trump’s inanities and lies that neither statement provoked comment, surprise or push back. Nor, for that matter, did Trump’s surreal Oval Office conversation with Kanye West, while Hurricane Michael was devastating the Florida panhandle, do much more than raise a few eyebrows.

How utterly SNAFU that America, siding with the globe’s most awful dictators, now opposes the existence of an International Criminal Court and decries the concept of trials for crimes against humanity.

And, finally, what a totally, absolutely, 100 percent crisis-of-legitimacy, completely anti-democratic SNAFU thing it is that the 48 senators who voted “no” on Justice Brett Kavanaugh represent many tens of millions more Americans than the 50 senators who voted yes, and that the president who nominated Kavanaugh won three million fewer votes than his opponent.

The views that the new conservative Supreme Court majority holds on women’s rights, voting rights, the environment, health care access, gay rights, the status of corporations, the rights of trade unions and other vital public issues are opposed by a majority of Americans. Because of gerrymandering, the Republicans could lose the popular vote by as much as six percent in the November mid-term elections and still end up controlling the House.

I used to think we’d simply fallen down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole in 2016. But it’s actually far worse.

We are SNAFU-ing uncontrollably. Our default has become chaos and cruelty. Our governing principle has become grab whatever you can no matter the cost. Step by step, each bedrock governing institution is being delegitimized and sullied. And, as each institution bends, so the very culture of democracy is poisoned.

Soon, if we do not resist with all our moral energies, there will be nothing left. This is how democracies die -- usually not in a flash, but gradually when the hard work of civility becomes too difficult, when the ability to sift fact from fiction becomes too fraught and when the great institutions of state become too corrupted.

Democracies die when this new normal ceases to outrage, when we just come to accept that our lot in life is SNAFU.

This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 12:00 AM.