Poor Joe Biden and his team of handlers. They just don’t understand why their most recent attempt to gaslight all of us isn’t working. We’ve learned through the online news magazine Politico that the White House is perplexed about why all their rhetoric patting themselves on the back for the economy isn’t convincing the American people that everything is just fine.
The term ‘gaslight,’ by the way, comes to us from the 1944 Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer film of the same name. In the classic movie, Boyer attempts to convince his wealthy wife, played by Bergman, that she’s losing her mind by manipulating and undermining her perception of reality, enabling him to steal her rather fabulous jewels.
Politicians do this to us all the time. In our case, our freedom and future is at stake. To name just a few existential gaslighting abuses we’ve endured, consider the “mostly peaceful” riots of 2020; assurances to this day that our southern border is “closed;” Biden’s trumpeting of the “successful” withdrawal from Afghanistan; how according to Biden we were “not going to get COVID” if we got vaccinated. There are dozens more probably coming to your mind as you read this. Now, we can add the Biden administration’s patronizing claim that the economy is great, but there’s a “disconnect” between how Americans feel about it versus how good it really is.
In other words, just call us Ingrid.
In Biden’s effort to convince the American people that we can’t believe the reality of our daily experiences, his team of low-rent con artists has opted to embrace the idea of “Bidenomics,” as though it were a good thing. They’ve decided the slogan will help along with their new narrative. That it’s not the economy that’s in trouble, it’s the emotional instability of Americans that’s keeping us from enjoying Biden’s alternate fake reality. Politico’s story presents a rather frantic effort to explain why the slogan transformed as happy talk is “struggling to catch on.”
How do they know? This CNN poll from earlier this month provides more than a hint: “Biden’s overall approval rating stands at 41% in the new poll, about on par with where it’s been since the spring. His approval drops to 37% when Americans assess his handling of the economy and further still to 30% for his handling of inflation. Among political independents, a scant 26% approve of his handling of inflation…The public remains broadly negative about the state of the country, with just 29% saying things are going well in the US and 71% that they’re going poorly, roughly the same as earlier this year.”
Yikes.
Reports are Masters of the Universe running around the White House, trying to look busy as the world continues to veer toward war. They have been dispersing White House officials throughout the country to tout the Democrats’ spending on Green New Deal money pit projects as an example of the laser-focus Biden has on the economy.
One place they’re not going is the grocery store. We don’t believe the Biden spin on the economy not because we’re nuts but because our daily lived experience includes shocking price increases of basic food staples, with the prices of gas and rent also continuing to go up. But ignore that, they say, look over here where the Biden team is excited about a lithium-ion plant opening for the batteries electric vehicles require, and Vice President Harris’ husband going to Grand Teton National Park to talk about “Bidenomics’” conservation programs. I guess they are too busy to notice a CBS News report headline announcing, “Food prices are rising at the highest rate in decades.”
That report reveals: “Over the past two years, egg prices have nearly doubled, leading some consumers to extreme workarounds like trying to smuggle eggs from Mexico… to save on household funds. Meat, fish, and chicken are all substantially pricier than they were two years ago, as well as cereal and bread, which cost nearly 25% more today than they did in 2021.” The increase in the price of eggs from 2022-2023 has been most alarming, with a 70% increase. Beef prices also jumped again in July 2023.
Moreover, the US Inflation Calculator site, which aggregates data, news, and information relating to inflation, reports: “The average price of food in the United States increased 4.9% in the 12 months ended July, after posting an annual increase of 5.7% in June, according to the latest inflation data published Aug. 10, 2023, by the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). As recently as August 2022, the rate of inflation for food at 11.4% was the highest since May 1979.”
As Biden traipses around the country trying to convince us to ignore the skyrocketing daily cost of living, our own government through the USDA warns that food prices will continue to increase for the rest of the year and continue to do so through 2024: “In 2023, all food prices are predicted to increase 5.8 percent, with a prediction interval of 5.0 to 6.6 percent. Food-at-home prices are predicted to increase 4.9 percent, with a prediction interval of 3.7 to 6.1 percent. Food-away-from-home prices are predicted to increase 7.5 percent, with a prediction interval of 7.0 to 7.9 percent. Food prices are expected to continue to decelerate but not decline in 2024. In 2024, all food prices are predicted to increase 2.4 percent, with a prediction interval of -2.8 to 7.9 percent.
Every day we experience the real-life impact of food inflation. The data I have shared with you here is on the internet and available to everyone. But for politicians, these are just numbers on a piece of paper. Human beings never enter the equation for them. We saw their man-made catastrophe full of gaslighting and arrogance unfold during COVID. In this next election, we have another chance not to let this obscene malfeasance continue.