Selective Outrage: The Political Amnesia of the Affordability Crisis
The people complaining about 'Affordability' are the same people who said NOTHING when prices jumped up under Biden's policies [Or whoever was in charge - AUTO PEN] and his/their policies gave us 9% inflation. Now they have selective memories. If they wanna play dumb[ass], fine. I don't forget because the stupid plays with GAS to LITE YOU UP.
There is a particular flavor of political discourse that has become impossible to ignore. It echoes from cable news panels, headlines in legacy media, and the talking points of progressive politicians: a relentless, grim litany on “affordability.” The cost of groceries, the price at the pump, the burden of a mortgage—all are cited as evidence of a system in collapse, demanding immediate and radical government intervention. For any conservative listening, this chorus rings with a profound and galling hypocrisy. It is not the concern itself that is offensive; every American feels the squeeze of rising prices. It is the breathtakingly selective memory, the willful political amnesia, that defines this new wave of complaint. The very people who now rend their garments over the cost of living are, with few exceptions, the same voices who were conspicuously silent when the foundations of this crisis were being poured by the policies they championed. To watch this performance is to witness a political class attempt to light a match in a room they themselves doused in gasoline.
Let us be blunt about the origin of the inflationary fire. The spark was a fundamental rejection of conservative economic principles. For decades, the pillars of a stable and prosperous economy were understood: fiscal discipline, sound monetary policy, deregulation, and energy independence. The Biden administration, upon taking office, systematically attacked each one. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021 with no Republican support and touted as essential relief, was a classic case of pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire. The economy was already reopening; the demand shock was imminent. Yet, the administration chose to inject a massive, debt-financed stimulus into the system, putting thousands of dollars directly into bank accounts at a moment when supply chains were fragile and unable to meet the surge in demand. Every conservative economist worth their salt sounded the alarm. This was not relief; it was a recipe for inflation. The response from the left was a collective eye-roll, dismissing these concerns as the outdated grumblings of deficit scolds who lacked compassion.
The gasoline kept coming. The Federal Reserve, which had maintained an emergency-level, near-zero interest rate policy for far too long, was slow to react, its leadership initially insisting inflation was “transitory.” This was not an act of God; it was a failure of policy. Meanwhile, the administration launched a regulatory assault on American energy from day one. Canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, freezing new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and issuing a stream of regulations designed to hamstring fossil fuel production sent a clear, chilling signal to the markets: American energy dominance was no longer a priority. The price of oil and gas is not set in a vacuum; it is a bet on future supply and demand. When the world’s most powerful economy declares war on its own energy production, the market responds accordingly. The cost of fuel began its inexorable climb, acting as a tax on every single good that must be transported—which is to say, on everything.
And what was the reaction from the left during this period, as inflation ticked up from 2% to 5%, then 7%, and finally peaked at a 40-year high of 9.1%? It was a symphony of silence, deflection, and blame-shifting. The talking points were as predictable as they were dishonest. It was “Putin’s Price Hike,” a transparent attempt to pin a Made-in-America problem on a foreign dictator’s invasion that occurred a full year after inflation began its steep ascent. It was “greedy corporations” and “price gouging,” a childish economic theory that assumes corporations only discovered greed in 2021. They blamed “supply chain issues,” as if global supply chains are a force of nature like the weather, rather than a system deeply sensitive to domestic policy on spending, regulation, and energy. The people now crying loudest about affordability were, at that critical juncture, either actively cheerleading the policies that caused the crisis or offering feeble excuses for them. Their silence was complicity.
This is where the conservative perspective parts ways, not just on policy, but on a fundamental understanding of accountability. Conservatism is built on the principle of cause and effect. You cannot spend trillions of dollars you do not have, strangle your own productive industries, and flood the economy with cheap money without consequences. The consequence is inflation. It is that simple. The left, however, operates in a realm of moral posturing where intentions are everything and outcomes are someone else’s fault. Their intention was to “build back better,” to deliver “relief,” to “transition” to a green utopia. The fact that these intentions resulted in a historic erosion of American living standards is, in their view, an unfortunate side effect, never a direct and predictable result of their ideology.
This brings us to the present moment. Inflation has cooled from its terrifying peak, thanks almost entirely to the Federal Reserve’s belated but aggressive interest rate hikes—a painful but necessary medicine that itself slows economic growth. But the damage is done. The price level is permanently higher. The “affordability crisis” is not about the *rate* of increase anymore; it is about the new, elevated plateau that Biden-era policies built. The family that could once afford a weekly grocery cart of $150 now pays $220 for the same items. That $70 gap is the direct cost of the policies the left advocated. The mortgage rate that was 3% is now 7%, pricing an entire generation out of the housing market. This is the legacy.
So, when the very architects and defenders of this disaster now posture as the champions of the struggling consumer, it is not just political opportunism—it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It is a strategy reliant on a short national memory. They are betting that you will not connect the dots. They are hoping you will forget the months of 9% inflation and accept their newfound concern as genuine. They want to “play dumb,” to use the parlance of the original post, pretending that this affordability crisis emerged from nowhere, a mysterious plague for which they have all the solutions—solutions that invariably involve more government spending, more regulation, and more central control.
The conservative duty, therefore, is to be the nation’s memory. We cannot forget. We cannot let the narrative be severed from its cause. When a politician stands up and bemoans the price of milk, the conservative response must be: “Yes, and why is it high? Who shut down the pipelines? Who passed the multi-trillion-dollar spending bills?” When they lament the unaffordability of a new car, we must ask: “Who flooded the economy with cash and disrupted the supply chains?” This is not about relitigating the past; it is about establishing accountability for the present.
The American people are not dumb. They feel the disconnect in their wallets every single day. They know that their paychecks buy less than they did four years ago. The left’s strategy is to light a new match of outrage over this pain, hoping you won’t notice they are the ones who doused you in gasoline. But we remember. And we will not let you forget that the heat you feel is the consequence of your own policies. The road to affordability is not through more of the same big-government solutions that created this mess. It is through a return to the conservative principles of fiscal sanity, deregulation, and unleashing American energy—the very antidote to the poison they served.
#Biden #Hypocrisy #Democrats #Politics