THEY'LL TURN US INTO BEGGARS BECAUSE WE'LL BE EASIER TO PLEASE.

That's a long time Insta Pundit header, with more currency during Democrat presidencies.  It's probably not wrong to dig at the Democrats in that way.  Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg, who has been observing the political scene for about as long as I have, correctly notes, "Jimmy Carter’s 'Malaise' speech in 1978 – in which he seemed to be reaching through the radio and telling the adolescent me 'I got my piece of the pie; you’re gonna get less. Deal with it' was one of many impulses that led to me eventually becoming a conservative." He continues, "I suspect this is going to become part of the dominant class’s messaging; gaslighting people that wanting life to be like it was a year ago is…"  It sure sounds like the Morale Conditioners are scolding spoiled children.  "Still, credit goes to [Washington Post columnist Micheline] Maynard for coming up with a thoroughly fitting message for the party in power, as they approach the midterms: Democrats in 2022: Try to Lower Your Expectations!"

Victory Girl Nina Bookout is having none of it.  "You know what? I’m going to say a big fat NOPE to Micheline’s little lecture. The supply chain issues we have right now are the fault of politicians from the state to the federal level. It isn’t just the arbitrary Covid lockdowns that are the cause of it."  We've been studying the logistics, and there is more to come on just how much trouble that government intervention is creating.

Tucker Carlson devoted a recent opening segment to the same theme.

Rather than "living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit … We do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations."

Got that? So if you don't like the fact the shelves are bare in your local store, don't throw a fit. Don't be an entitled little tool. Lower your expectations. What did you expect in America? Come on. Bread lines, we've always had bread lines. It's sort of charmingly retro, these bread lines. Don't complain as your life becomes worse and as your country degrades. That's the message, and not surprisingly, that message is coming directly from the people who are making your life worse and destroying the country.

James Lileks isn't buying the spin, either.

Absent that, the message sems to be: stop thinking like an American.

Because that is the problem, isn't it? Old and busted: wowing Soviet leaders with the bounty of our supermarkets. The new naught-ness: empty shelves are good thing, because we're bouncing back bigger, and also (the whispered part) you realize that being a fat greedy Costco shopper with all your expectations is unsustainable and inequitous.

All these incremental constrictions, each a minor annoyance, eventually cohere into a feeling that things are sliding towards a culture of constant vexation.

Is there any more effective way of demonstrating that privilege is civilization then to privilege-shame people who are calling attention to their civilization being eroded, one empty shelf at a time?  That post also has a devastating takedown of another of Our Intellectual Betters more annoying beliefs.

Revanchist running-dog lackey of the plutocratic hegemony that I am, I am suspicious when the state determintes your needs and justifies their construction. You don’t need the treadmill is you don’t need 14 varities [c.q.] of ice cream is you don’t need that car is you don’t need that hamburger when there's bug protein is you don't need fast access to unprotected detergent is you don't need to go to that wedding is you don’t need . . . this. That. The other thing. And it is churlish of you to think you need this when (insert aching never-solved non-analogous problem that still exists despite decades of expenditures here).

No. Just no.

I admire monastics choosing lives of ascetic struggle but doubt voters will reward politicians who mandate we join them. Heading to a cave to find God is one thing; eating lab-grown meat to boost Joe Biden’s polls isn’t the path to enlightenment. Even the most austere Americans prefer a politics of abundance to a politics of scarcity.

Everything is getting dumber.  More snark from Raggedy Ann only amplifies the dumb.  Pray that the attack ads are only writing themselves.