The American left has never had – and this is a view of course – all that close a connection with reality. But we really should be demanding that there is some, some connection, rather than the pure and entire invention of matters.

It might well be that the Pentagon’s spending is too high. The US could indeed be too militaristic. And yet complaining about that does not excuse this:

The absurd fact that the world’s richest country spends more money on bombs, missiles and tanks than medicine in the middle of a pandemic is made even more blatant by the failures of the warfare state to “defend” itself.

The author, one David Masciotra (no, me neither) has already correctly identified the Pentagon’s budget as being of the order of $700 billion a year.

Compared to medicine:

U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2018, reaching $3.6 trillion or $11,172 per person. As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent.

No, we can’t even start to insist that he meant just government spending:

The federal government spent nearly $1.2 trillion on health care in fiscal year 2019 (table 1). Of that, Medicare claimed roughly $644 billion, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Pro-gram (CHIP) about $427 billion, and veterans’ medical care about $80 billion.

America doesn’t spend more on the military than on health care. To claim that it does is simply wrong.

But you know, the American left and the connection with reality….