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00:00.01 [EAS ALERT SIGNAL] 00:00.04Ironic, isn't it? Eighty-three years ago Orson Welles broadcast his fictional masterpiece, War of the Worlds. Frozen with fear, listeners sat glued to their radio sets as scene after scene of unimaginable horror unfolded before their very ears. So believable was that Halloween scare-story of 1938, so gullible its listening audience of 32 million frightened people, that Welles would later recount how the "Houses were emptying, churches were filling up and, from Nashville to Minneapolis, there was wailing in the street and the rending of garments." For an interminable hour people no longer looked at the sky and saw the familiar twinkle of stars reassuring them that all in God's universe was where it properly should be.

Instead, that same night sky filled their minds with thoughts of impending doom as their eyes scanned the horizon for signs that those deadly machines had arrived at their own doorsteps with its promise of utter death and destruction. Though the audience frantically sought refuge, there was nowhere they might escape their fate, for the menace of the invaders was not approaching from somewhere out there, but in the fear that inhabited their own minds.

This Halloween, more than eight decades later, it is not false newscasts or the fear of a fictional invader from a distant planet that inhabits our minds and fills us with unfounded dred. This time it is a real invader and a real threat that approaches from the nearby pumpkin patches of our reality. Even as you listen to this broadcast, the invaders are spreading across the landscape of America and Trump machines are at work destroying everything and anything that gets in their way. State after state, city after city has already fallen prey to the ghost of Donald J. Trump and the savagery of his wrecking machines, with many more sure to follow. A good number of our best defenses have been captured by the enemy and are being used to unleash their weapons on a defenseless population.

Once the bunkers of democracy, legislative fortresses now spew death rays of toxic pollutants, coat-hanger horror, catastrophic-covid and vote-dissolving acids over a weakened and disbelieving population. Other bastions of freedom and progress stand on the brink, yet the politicians within them hold out their hands,trying to negotiate with the enemy for the crumbs of what's left of a once great civilization.

It wasn't the little germ that held the Trump machines at bay last Halloween. It was the smallest of all human endeavors, the tiny vote that bought our democracy a little time to regroup and rearm. Still, the ghost of Donald J. Trump lives on and grows ever more virulent and dangerous, now threatening to bring all the glorious work of the Founders to a crashing end.

As Orson put it back in 1938, "maybe, that the destruction of the Martians was only a reprieve, for them and not for us." Only today, it isn't Martian invaders from space that threaten our planet. It is ourselves, right here on earth. And, it wasn't a reprieve for them, but only a momentary reprieve for us. Given the vicious attack by our mortal enemies, now concentrating on the election process itself, even that tiny vote may not be able to save us—not now, not in twenty-twenty-two, not in twenty-twenty-four.

Ironic, isn't it, that what once threatened us through an unreasonable fear and a willingness to believe a fiction, now threatens to bring about the end of humankind through a lack of fear and utter disbelief that such a thing can happen here. Well, it is happening, and it is real. And if you doubt that, just wait until your doorbell rings and the Ghost of Donald J. Trump comes for you. Then you will believe, then you will be afraid. But it will be too little, too late.

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