The best we can hope for is for them to not increase as fast as they have

That’s what inflation going down means. Inflation is the rate in which prices increase. Saying “inflation going down” means that the rate prices increase is not as much. “Inflation going down” still means prices are increasing. People are confusing “inflation going down” with deflation, which means prices are decreasing.

This is exactly how I felt. There is always a response that “it’s intentional. Unreliable narrator…blah blah blah.” Which doesn’t make it better. It’s that “jokes on them I was only pretending” meme, but in literary form.