The worst president in modern history has passed the baton to an even worse candidate, Kamala Harris. Harris is calling for government control of all commerce -- though she calls her plan “price controls” rather than communism. Her running mate, Tim Walz, is considerably less nuanced. He endorses communism as “people sharing with each other.”

Kamala Harris has failed at every job she has held. She was the top law enforcement officer in San Francisco. It’s now a cesspool of crime, drug abuse, and homelessness. Then she took her San Fransisco policies statewide as the California Attorney General. Now one of the most naturally blessed states in the country is experiencing a mass exodus of its most productive people. As the Vice President, Harris was appointed by Joe Biden to be the border czar. Under her supervision, enough illegal aliens entered the country to populate Los Angeles three times over. Yet in this year’s election, Kamala Harris will undoubtedly get over 70 million votes. How is it that someone as unaccomplished as Harris is even competitive?

About one third of voters are concerned that we’re losing our self-governed republic, and vote for the candidates least likely to undermine our Constitution -- Republicans. Another third of voting age citizens don’t bother to vote. They’re the complacent, who either don’t care about our future, or have given up. The remaining third of adult citizens votes for the party openly undermining the Constitution -- Democrats. Only a tiny portion of that third are true radicals who think our Constitution is obsolete, and wish our federated republic to be replaced with a system of centralized control. Most Democrat voters are those who vote their feelings. The non-voters and the “feelings” voters comprise the complacent gullible segment of Americans.

The MSM propaganda machinery is determined to sell the socialist narrative to the gullible. It does so by playing to their feelings. Socialism is described as “neighborliness.” Government seizure and redistribution is simply “spreading the wealth around.” The government picking commercial winners and losers is “saving the planet.” The propagandists hope the gullible find blind acceptance of the narrative less troublesome than observation and analysis.

The narrative asks us to sacrifice our freedom because

• Carbon dioxide is killing us -- even though it’s essential for life
• Speech is violence -- but actual violence requires context
• Killing the unborn is a fundamental right -- but defending ourselves is not, and
• All races are equal -- but some are incapable of achievement without government intervention.

The narrative is designed to make the gullible “feel good” about sacrificing their rights for centralized control.

Shortly before his death, I watched a Charles Krauthammer interview on Fox News in which he shared his accumulated wisdom (unfortunately I can’t find the link). He said that he didn’t think our civilization would end because of a meteor impact, or an extinction level pandemic. He suspected that mankind would die quietly as we stop caring enough to survive. We would give up on producing food, maintaining the infrastructure, and enforcing standards of civilized behavior. Krauthammer predicted that civilization would stop facing life’s challenges, and wither away from complacency. One need only take a tour through Kamala’s home state of California to see the beginning of that decline.

How did that happen?

During the 20th century, the government undertook a massive change of mission. It transitioned from being our protector, to being our provider. Our founder’s vision (as codified in the Constitution) was that the federal government exists to protect our inalienable rights, secure us from threats, and maintain civil order. But it has morphed into a leviathan that protects us from

• Loss of income with bailouts and unemployment compensation,
• Economic downturns with stimulus,
• Ethnic disparities with quotas, and
• Personal offense with censorship.

The gullible naively expect tomorrow to be just like today -- if not better -- due to the government’s benevolent oversight. The party of FDR, LBJ, and Kamala Harris offers us a world free of consequences, in exchange for our freedom. A disturbing number of voters will accept that deal.

But a world without consequences is a world without accountability -- failure costs nothing. But when failure is free, it is also abundant. That abundance applies equally to us, and to the government functionaries which the gullible trust as their caregivers, even though it has become obvious that such trust is misplaced. Those entrusted with our welfare, are totally unconcerned with our wellbeing. Do the TSA agents at the airport seem at all concerned about our travel experience? That indifference infects our entire government.

The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of 320,000 illegal immigrant children released into the country. Yet there hasn’t been a mass mobilization of law enforcement to find them. Our federal bureaucrats are apparently indifferent that those children may now be slaves or sex workers. Ahh… complacency is such a peaceful state of mind.

Just one month after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, a Secret Service agent guarding him left her post without permission to breast feed. Yet she’s still on the job because she lives in a consequence-free world, in which there is no consequence for prioritizing her convenience over the life of her protectee.

Our military is the best trained and funded in the world. Yet it lost a 20-year war to an 80,000-man, poorly trained and equipped army. Despite such an epic failure, nobody in leadership has been fired, disciplined, or even suffered loss of advancement. It’s easy focusing on social engineering when there are no consequences for military failure.

NASA sent two astronauts on a one-week mission. They’ve now been marooned in orbit for months. Yet there hasn’t been any agency “full court press” such as was done for the Apollo 13 accident. The complacent NASA leadership is saying: maybe we’ll get the astronauts back later this month, or maybe next year -- depending on schedules.

Freedom from consequences has made those maintaining our government complacent, and the safety net it promised is rotting -- even as the net’s load is increasing.

We are approaching a suicidal level of complacency because

• Corporations are too big to fail,
• Oaths of office aren’t binding promises,
• Professional expertise has been replaced by intersectionality,
• Failure has become victimhood, and
• Government incompetence is justification for government growth.

Eventually the net will fail and an unprepared people will be met with the consequence of avoiding the realities of life for years. It will be because the party of Obama, Biden, Harris, and Walz assured us that they could deliver a utopian world free of consequences. Most Harris voters will be those who chose to live as naïve children, not realizing that they are entrusting their welfare to other indifferent children.

The contrasts between Trump/Vance and Harris/Walz gives us a clear choice in November. Will we choose to be coddled like children -- blissfully unaware that the consequence of today’s “feel good” is tomorrow’s downfall? Or will we choose to be self-reliant adults -- securing the future, by accepting accountability today? I pray the disaster that has been the Biden administration has moved a few people out of the “gullible” column.

John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

Image: AT via Magic Studio