I’m wondering how much more money we don’t have will be wasted during the latest distraction, a royal wedding.

It’s like Black Friday, with people programming alarm clocks to rise in the middle of the night to slurp up coverage in their pajamas. You know the famous quote about those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As a people, we seem proud of patriotism which turns a blind eye to how much is spent on our national defense and what we get for those numbing numbers.

Our citizenry prefers to leave war spending to those with hidden agendas and self-interests which drive up the tab. As for the history lesson we miss, remember Dwight Eisenhower and the military-industrial complex?

The last general to inhabit the White House — and the only five-star to ever occupy the Oval Office — warned “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

In a story that should have been on Time’s April 25 cover instead of the debate about whether or not there’s a hell stirred by a book by Rob Bell, 40, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Thompson sketches a road map of “How to Save a Trillion Dollars,” starting with a fleet of 11 $15 billion aircraft carriers.

They will be followed by the 20-percent-built Gerald R. Ford in 2015 and an unnamed vessel due to set sail in 2020 with a crew of 5,000. Problem for our bottom line is each represents 6,000 jobs and $400 million in annual local spending. Their recipients don’t want to see the gravy train derail.

The magazine portrays these floating cities as “increasingly obsolete platforms for war” in a world ruled by drones rather than manned aircraft. The United States and its allies pounded Libya with cruise missiles, with “carriers notable only for their absence. Yet the Navy, backed by the Pentagon and Congress, continues to churn them out as if it were still 1942.”

Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked last year, “Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?”

Do you know how many bases we have sprinkled around the world? Five hundred! Sixty-six years after Adolf Hitler, we still have 80,000 troops in Europe. Does the Navy need 50 attack submarines for a cave-dwelling enemy? And do the Air Force, Navy and Marines need $400 billion in new jet fighters?

With Congress trying to bring home the bacon, politicians quake at rocking the job boat. And isn’t it lunacy to talk about defense cuts while overextended militarily in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya?

“The single biggest threat to our national security is our debt.” Guess who said that? Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Did you know we’re spending 50 percent more (even not counting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) than we did on 9-11?

According to Thompson, $1 trillion in cuts wouldn’t be drastic, but a “trim” that would “still leave the Pentagon fatter than it was before 9-11.” “In fact,” Thompson writes, “the U.S. spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world combined.” Which leaves the cupboard bare for fighting a fourth war — on debt.

Is it any wonder we’re broke and gutting our schools, arts and social safety-net programs when military spending has gone from $1,500 per capita in 1998 to $2,700 in 2008? Our NATO allies skimp by on $500. You’ve probably guessed the difference is what they’re investing in education, health care and infrastructure. We’re coming up on a decade mired in Afghanistan to the tune of almost half a trillion dollars against an enemy with no army, navy or air force.

As much as I love irony, that’s insane. Is it really cost-effective to dispatch a billion-dollar destroyer and crew of 300 to confront five Somali pirates in a skiff? American taxpayers have good reason to be irate when their dollars pick up the tab for a military subsidizing health care for our European allies.