In a recent editorial attacking the Reagan Administration’s Central American policies, The Nation demonstrated once again how pro-Soviet attitudes so warp the mind that even such simple mental tasks as counting and adding and subtracting are no longer possible. Opined The Nation’s casuists:

If the State Department was seriously interested in reducing the daily body count, it could begin in El Salvador, which is probably the global champion in state-sanctioned killing these days.

Global champion? Despite their best efforts, how could El Salvador’s right wing death squads (sanctioned by no state whatever) ever keep up with the fully state-sanctioned Soviet columns reducing Afghan villages to bloody oblivion, or with Soviet-sanctioned—and equipped Arab terrorists driving car bombs into every other building in Beirut? But then again, maybe The Nation‘s pronouncement simply reflects a sense of sportsmanship: Why should bush-league amateurs have to compete in the same global league as professionals?