It seems to me that Americans are retreating further and further into a fantasy world. Perhaps it’s the Bush administration’s disdain for reality-based thinking or a reaction to an increasingly complicated world, but it’s starting to get a little crazy.

The Blackwater hullabaloo (brouhaha?) is a perfect example of our ability to obscure everything with euphemism, to look the other way, and then to act shocked when the painfully obvious becomes impossible to continue to ignore.

Blackwater personnel are not “private contractors.” They are mercenaries. And while they will undoubtedly go on about their protection role, they, in the proud tradition of mercenaries throughout history, are arrogant, difficult to control, and violent. This tends to be a common trait in people who kill other people for money.

Now, I’m not being critical—most wars are about money and there is no question that these guys are good at what they do. The reason that they’ve been able to operate with so little oversight for so long is likely because they haven’t lost a single American diplomat on their watch. Think about it: If you’re a congressman visiting Iraq, who would you want protecting you—a well equipped, well paid, former SEAL or a nineteen year old reservist still waiting for his flak jacket to be delivered? And what would you be willing to overlook for that level of protection?

What bothers me isn’t so much Blackwater’s behavior, it’s the sudden stunned outrage I’m seeing in the media. It’s as though someone at NBC finally got around to looking up “mercenary” in the dictionary.

War is a nasty business. It’s expensive, brutal, and complicated. Of course, you can whitewash it, but eventually it comes to roost. Those dead servicemen you don’t see on TV make their absence felt at home. The war tax you’re not paying creates a budget deficit that drags on the economy. And the mistakes this administration continues to spin create a quagmire it could take decades to get out of.

Oh, and mercenaries aren’t the sweet guys we told ourselves they were.