For a lot of Americans, it was not difficult prior to the pandemic to believe government authorities were mostly forthright with information, had our best interests at heart and were earnestly trying to solve our Nation’s problems. Then in 2020, Dr. Fauci and other lifelong bureaucrats swung a wrecking ball right between the eyes of that hopeful sentiment with their dishonest bumbling of the Covid Crisis. Now, inflation has replaced the virus as America’s top concern and we’re beginning to see a similar approach to tackling the issue where more attention is being given to the narrative than to the threat itself. This makes formulating an effective battle plan close to impossible and the result is Americans again suffering more than necessary.

Narratives are critically important to government officials because they frame the essence of a social anxiety in a way the public can understand. And as any shrewd politician knows, the proper narrative can not only identify a problem, but also grow your authority as a necessary measure to contend with it, blame it on someone you don’t like and above all, ensure that any culpability you may possess for causing the problem never sees the light of day. Only a year ago, we can remember the endlessly repeated, nonsensical narrative that we were experiencing a “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.” Now, this was obviously not true to anyone who knew any other human beings and talked to them. We all saw a friend, spouse, coworker or ourselves diligently receive every vax and booster, only to test positive for the virus, yet the “blame the unvaxxed” narrative remained solidly in place because of what it accomplished. As long as Americans were attacking each other over vax status or not wearing a mask, we weren’t talking about the origins of the virus or any role our government may have had in gain-of-function research. We also weren’t discussing how authoritarian some governors and mayors had become, while hypocritically not obeying their own policies and there was certainly no mention of the global threat China had become. Instead, we were focused on ostracizing fellow citizens who didn’t follow the narrative. The Biden Administration blamed the cause of our collective anxiety on free-thinking insubordinate citizens who selfishly believed in bodily autonomy and following basic immunity science.

Some may chalk that up to just politics, but real harm quickly followed when official Covid policy was actually constructed around the false narrative. Vaccine mandates and passports were required long after we knew the vaccines did not stop transmission. Children were being forced to take experimental medicine even when we knew their risk of serious illness was about that, or less than that, of the flu. Promising therapeutics, natural immunity and even healthy lifestyle choices were not allowed into the conversation. When narrative replaced facts on the ground, it became impossible to formulate an effective solution. Garbage in, Garbage out, as they say. So Americans continued to suffer from lockdowns, isolation, losing their jobs and close relationships, while those in authority seemed content with vilifying political opponents, not solving problems. They claimed to be the embodiment of science itself while chastising anyone who dared to question the scientific validity of cloth masks or vaccinating children. Meanwhile, Americans got more obese, depressed and anxious until Covid, as a function of nature, simply became less virulent on its own.

Fast-forwarding to the present, inflation has taken center stage as the number one threat to American prosperity and the deflective narratives have already begun. “Putin’s price hike” was short-lived after being laughed off the stage earlier this year after some very basic charts showed the rise in fuel prices coincided sharply with the advent of Biden’s energy policy, not Putin rolling tanks into Ukraine. Also on the cutting floor was “inflation is transitory” and “a good sign of strong employment.” None of that stuck, so now we’re just left with our media obsessing over the actions of a hawkish Federal Reserve and what they’ll do to tame inflation. It’s all about the Fed, they say. It’s all about interest rates, curbing demand and healing supply chains. All of that factors in, but almost completely (and conveniently) left out of the coverage is one of the biggest causes to inflation that exists, the enormous deficit spending that has occurred in a Democrat-controlled congress.

Milton Friedman defined inflation as a monetary phenomenon, driven by increasing the amount of money circulating in an economy. During the Covid craze, Congress passed the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan, some of the most bloated and wasteful legislation in history. In total, this Kardashian retail therapy approach to solving a crisis tacked $5T onto the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet as they had to print money the country did not have. Congress printed trillions of dollars and injected them into they system so they could be seen as “doing something about Covid” and high inflation was the inevitable result. Of course, those who recklessly wrote those checks are the same people crafting the narrative on inflation, which not shockingly, sweeps the elephant of deficit spending under the rug. As a result, just like with Covid, they’re not truly addressing the problem because inconvenient facts are being ignored. In fact, they’re just making it worse. Last month, the laughably titled “Inflation Reduction Act,” which nobody even tries to argue will lower inflation, was passed without a single Republican vote and spent another $700B we don’t have. Simply put, you don’t cure cancer by making tumors bigger and you don’t put out fires with torches. The people in charge are incapable of solving inflation because they refuse to acknowledge their role in causing it. Instead, they pass the buck to the Fed, a buck now worth less than 90 cents.

So Americans now suffer from a substantially higher cost of living as Congress relentlessly dilutes the value of the dollar with deficit spending. Since Democrats in Congress refuse to do their part to reduce inflation, it is up to the Fed to do all the heavy lifting by substantially raising rates, slamming the brakes on the economy and causing a recession – a recession that could have been far less painful, if not prevented, had Congress been fiscally responsible in the first place. A balanced budget, energy abundance and lower taxes are what every American should demand from Congress, which is the exact opposite of what is being delivered now.