The grotesque spectacle practically writes itself.

For years, the guardians of "consumer welfare" in Washington postured as vigilant sentinels against consolidation in the airline industry, so that when JetBlue sought to acquire Spirit Airlines, the Department of Justice intervened immediately and with all earnest. The argument, we were told, was simple: Spirit, the plucky ultra-low-cost carrier, provided downward pressure on fares. To allow its absorption into a larger competitor would be to deprive consumers, especially cost-conscious ones, of a vital check on airline pricing power.

It was a familiar story. Antitrust, in its modern form, is less about law than about narrative. Regulators construct a world in which they are the indispensable referees of competition, forever standing between the public and predatory capital. In this telling, Spirit was not merely an airline; it was a public good in disguise, a necessary irritant keeping the majors honest.

And so the merger was blocked.

Fast forward but a few years, and the narrative collapses under its own weight. Spirit, long operating on razor-thin margins and a business model acutely vulnerable to cost shocks, finds itself in dire financial straits. Suddenly, the same political apparatus that insisted on preserving Spirit as an independent competitor now contemplates, or outright endorses, a $500 million taxpayer-funded rescue.