By Ben R. Williams
As I write this column on Sunday, September 27, the price of a gallon of regular gas is $4.29 at pretty much every local station. Looking at the AAA fuel price website, that’s actually cheaper than the national average of $4.48 per gallon.
Even more troubling, the national average for a gallon of diesel is a whopping $6.47 per gallon. Whether you own a diesel vehicle or not, we’re all going to be feeling the pain from high diesel prices sooner rather than later; as diesel prices go up, trucking companies will need to increase their rates in order to turn a profit, and as always, those increases will be passed on to the consumers.
The AAA fuel price website also conveniently includes the national averages for fuel prices one year ago. A year ago, before President Donald Trump’s disastrous war with Iran, a gallon of regular averaged $3.14 and a gallon of diesel averaged $3.69.
If you’re anything like me, and I know I am, a trip to the gas station has become a painful ordeal. For the last few months, it’s cost me a little over sixty bucks to fill my tank. There was once a time in my life when spending sixty bucks was exciting because it meant I had just treated a friend to a nice dinner or I was about to enjoy a video game. Now it’s become the price I pay two or three times per week to continue being a functional member of society.
The people I feel for the most, however, are the folks who heat their homes with furnaces and have to buy home heating oil. Heating oil is basically just off-road diesel with different additives and it’s taxed differently. The most recent available data for a gallon of home heating oil comes from March 30 of this year, and it averaged $5.30 per gallon.
The average home heating oil tank is 275 gallons. That’s about $1,500 to fill the tank, and if it’s a cold winter, you’ll probably need to fill it twice. People are going to go cold this winter because they won’t be able to afford heat in the richest country in the world.
I realize that fuel is still cheaper in the U.S. than it is in many other parts of the world. I also realize that when it comes to the victims of our endless, pointless war in Iran, the people having to pay more for gas are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were the children inside the primary school in southeastern Iran that got obliterated by a U.S. missile.
Nonetheless, I resent the fact that Trump’s actions have directly made everything more expensive in this country, fuel included. But what I resent almost as much are the people in this country who, after spending four years complaining that fuel was too expensive under former President Joe Biden, are now twisting themselves into knots to reframe higher gas prices as a good thing just because they like their guy.
I realize that for many of the diehard faithful, there is no point in trying to hold them to any kind of internal consistency. But you’ve gotta do something, so here are my favorites of their ridiculous arguments to justify higher gas prices.
1. “Hey, I’d rather pay more for gas than get nuked by Iran.”
Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, there are no legitimate sources outside of the right-wing echo chamber to suggest Iran was anywhere close to having nuclear weapons. Additionally, in June of 2025, the U.S. attacked three nuclear facilities in Iran under “Operation Midnight Hammer” and Trump claimed afterward that Iran’s nuclear program had been totally destroyed. And why on Earth would Iran want to nuke us and risk mutually assured destruction when they could just keep selling us oil at a tidy profit? I’m not saying that we launched an ill-considered attack on a Middle Eastern country under false pretenses, but it is something that has happened over and over again throughout the course of my entire life, so maybe it’s worth considering.
2. “Kamala would have been worse.”
Prior to the election, the chief criticism of Kamala Harris from pundits on the right was that she was going to get us embroiled in an endless war with Iran and raise the deficit. Thank goodness we avoided that dark fate.
3. “People complain about having to pay four bucks for a gallon of gas, but a fancy cup of coffee costs seven dollars for 12 ounces?”
Different things cost different amounts of money. Also, I don’t need to buy a cup of coffee every day in order to remain gainfully employed.
4. “I’ll pay ten dollars a gallon for gas before I ever vote for a Democrat!”
Yeah, you probably will.
