Well, only if you can keep fighting a defined enemy who is at all vulnerable to a traditional conflict. An enemy who is globally distributed and just targets vulnerable energy and water infrastructure over the internet is much less targetable with air power.

But if you don't keep up at least a modicum of pretense for building air superiority, you will have two problems.

In the case of domestic extremism the theatre gets pushed to surveillance + communication monitoring.

Why? The enemy still exists physically and can be attacked like any other target. Being distributed is precisely the reason why we need a strong Air Force with global air superiority so the enemy can't hide.

This is like complaining about an expensive meal and then someone starts to bring up how necessary food is.

It's more like complaining about an expensive meal like it was a crazy idea to begin with, and someone points out that expensive meals can be necessary. Air superiority will obviously be one of the most expensive elements to maintain in a modern military. whether the meal should be 200 or 500, whether the restaurant could have been a much better value, it's going to be more than most any other food you buy and the problem was not in deciding to eat at an expensive restaurant, but in more specific choices of which restaurant, what you ordered off the menu, etc.