IDENTITY INFLATION
The Only Moral Credit System Where You Can Borrow Authority Without Earning It
IDENTITY INFLATION
The Only Moral Credit System Where You Can Borrow Authority Without Earning It
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
There’s a political trick in America so common we barely notice it anymore.
Not fraud, exactly.
Not lying, exactly.
More like… borrowing.
Borrowing roots.
Borrowing history.
Borrowing suffering.
Borrowing cultural weight you didn’t earn.
It has a clean definition once you strip away the jargon:
Identity inflation is the only political credit system where you can borrow moral authority without earning it — and only one side of the aisle accepts that currency.
That’s the taboo no one says out loud.
Conservatives can’t run this scam.
Their own voters won’t tolerate it.
Their ideology rejects it.
The media won’t protect it.
But on the Left?
It’s a built-in feature of the operating system.
If you can claim — or imply — membership in a morally favored group, you inherit a slice of the prestige, even if your relationship to that identity is thin, late, symbolic, or genealogical.
Ancestry becomes authenticity.
Heritage becomes homeland.
Residency becomes rootedness.
And story becomes credential.
You don’t need to be formed by a community.
You only need to gesture toward it.
And — this is the key — the ecosystem will protect you.
The Case Study: Stacey Plaskett
Let’s take the most recent, and most instructive, example.
Stacey Plaskett.
Born in Brooklyn.
Raised in New York.
Educated in Washington, D.C.
Career built in Washington, D.C.
Moved to the Virgin Islands as an adult to pursue politics.
And yet she presents herself publicly as a “daughter of the islands,”
a figure culturally shaped by St. Croix,
a rooted representative speaking from the soil of her people.
Technically, her parents are from the Virgin Islands.
But she wasn’t raised there.
She wasn’t educated there.
She wasn’t formed there.
She is, in every meaningful sense, a synthetic local —
a mainland professional who backfilled identity because the role demanded it.
And here’s the real point:
She is not unusual.
She is system-perfect.
Identity inflation isn’t her invention.
It’s her inheritance — a credentialing shortcut created by a political culture that rewards the gesture more than the grind.
Why Conservatives Can’t Use the Trick
This asymmetry reveals everything.
If a conservative tried to do what Plaskett did,
the collapse would be instantaneous:
Their own voters would reject the claim.
The media would torch them.
Academia would do forensic ancestry analysis.
They’d be accused of appropriation, erasure, or deception.
It would be the lead story on every legacy outlet for a week.
Because conservative legitimacy comes from:
competence
results
experience
responsibility
track record
performance
Identity doesn’t help a conservative.
It actually weakens them with their own base.
Their world is built on merit, not symbolism.
But progressive politics?
It flipped the incentive structure 25 years ago.
There, legitimacy is conferred through:
identity
victim narrative
affiliation
historic group weight
inherited grievance
symbolic representation
Conservatives use performance as currency.
Progressives use identity as currency.
Only one of those currencies can be forged.
Why the Media Makes This Possible
Identity inflation doesn’t work without an enforcement arm.
And the media — legacy, activist, and academic —
enforces the exchange rate.
If a conservative exaggerates identity:
scandal.
If a progressive exaggerates identity:
profile piece.
The Left receives euphemisms:
“complex heritage,”
“lived experience,”
“cultural nuance.”
The Right receives obituaries:
“appropriation,”
“fraud,”
“misrepresentation.”
Same action.
Different sentence.
Identity inflation only circulates because one side protects the counterfeits.
Why Identity Inflation Exists At All
This part is essential:
Identity inflation only appears when performance disappears.
When a political movement can no longer point to:
safer streets
working schools
functioning cities
thriving families
affordable living
competent institutions
identity becomes the substitute credential.
If you can’t deliver results, you deliver narrative.
If you can’t defend outcomes, you defend ancestry.
If the policy record is indefensible, you lean into the biography.
It’s a vacuum-filler.
A stand-in.
A patch where governance used to live.
Identity inflation is a symptom of political decay —
a substitute for competence.
The Coming Collapse
The irony is beautiful.
Identity inflation works brilliantly
right up until the moment people start asking for results again.
Then the currency collapses.
Because identity can get you elected,
but it cannot:
run a city
reduce crime
build infrastructure
balance a budget
enforce laws
negotiate contracts
repair institutions
improve schools
or fix anything that actually matters
Identity can borrow moral authority.
It cannot deliver real authority.
One is symbolic.
One is structural.
One is borrowed.
One must be earned.
When results matter again —
and they always do —
identity inflation gets wiped out like every moral bubble in history.
It’s not sustainable.
It’s not functional.
And it’s not real.
It’s borrowed light.
And borrowed light always burns out.
Final Note
Stacey Plaskett isn’t the villain of this story.
She’s the artifact.
The product.
The natural outcome of a political world that replaced competence with credentials and substituted biography for performance.
Identity inflation lets you borrow authority without earning it.
But only one side can cash those checks,
because only one side built the bank.
And the bank is failing.