I watched a crime show once where a single scene disturbed me to the point that it haunts me to this very day.  It wasn't the violence that disturbed me; in fact, it was just the opposite. 

The scene opened with a  man in his home, surrounded by his family, comfortable, safe, engaging in normal routines.  The doorbell rings, and the man answers, opens the door to a stranger pleading for help.  The stranger has some emergency — an injured dog he'd accidentally run over, or maybe his car had broken down — and he needs to use the man's phone to call for help. 

The man doesn't invite the stranger in; instead, he turns away to make the call himself.   The door is still open, and the stranger and his cohorts enter the home.  They close the door, and now the man's alone with these strangers in his house.  He immediately understands something's wrong, but they're alone in the room — no one to help, no way to call for help.  The crew mercilessly guns down the entire family — parents, kids, even the dog. 

If the man had it to do over again, he'd never open the door to a stranger under any circumstances.  But he realized too late that the only thing between the killers and his family was that door, and intentionally or not, he had let them in.

In an eerie way, the coming election reminds me of that man and his choice to open the door.  We have an advantage over the man in the story because we already know that the guy outside is a bad guy.  We know he's been selling out America for decades to our enemies.  We know he used his damaged son as a bagman to rake in millions in pay-to-play schemes.  We know he's used our money, our tax dollars to leverage our allies, like Ukraine.  Those charges aren't up for debate; they're facts. 

And a small detail: Joe's senile, not capable of being president even if he weren't a crook.  But Joe has comrades to do his dirty work.  Kamala, Obama, Hillary, Pelosi — all have their own plans for us once they're in.  They want to eliminate fossil fuels — no fracking, no oil.  This isn't just about jobs; it's about our gasoline for cars, home heating oil, most everything we own or use because oil powers plants, production, our country.  Yet these people want to simply eliminate our major source of energy.

They want to do away with the 2nd Amendment to keep and bear arms.  They've put a left-wing fanatic, Beto O'Rourke , in charge of that piece.  Beto hates guns, at least with the American people.  He  proudly announced, yeah, he's coming for our guns.  Take that!  

They're already eliminating the 1st Amendment, our right to assemble, to gather, exercise religious freedom, freedom of speech.  These infringements on our rights are enforced by more friends of Joe, governors and mayors who just appointed themselves dictators of their cities or states. 

Aside from personal rights, this cabal promises to tear down America's constitutional government.   They'll undo separation of powers and pack the Supreme Court.  That means they'll put in enough additional Supreme Court justices to give their party a guaranteed majority on any decision forever, or at least for decades.  They want to kill the filibuster, the minority party's only chance to have a voice in the Senate, to counter the majority. 

And Joe and his friends want our wealth — all of it.  They'll tax us until they've drained us.  They'll implement socialized health care, where the public option (government) will take whatever we have left in required premiums and then cut health care to the bone so as not to have to spend their ill gotten gains.

For the man who had to watch his family be massacred, it started out with a simple act: answering the door.  He had no reason to fear the person on the other side of that door because he'd answered the door dozens of times before, and nothing bad ever happened.  He wasn't suspicious or alert because he was comfortable in his home, safe in his home. 

Many Americans can't imagine that the horrors I've described would ever really happen.  They see this as just another election where if a Democrat gets in, we may have a rough four years, but Democrats have won before, and nothing catastrophic happened.  They're comfortable, safe in their country. 

Today, those people may vote or maybe not.  They might be too busy, don't really have that time to carve out.  Maybe their regular polling place is closed, and it's too much trouble to find out where they go to vote.  If lines stretch for hours, maybe they can't waste hours standing around doing nothing.  Or maybe it's super-cold, and they think someone would have to be crazy to stand outside in freezing temperatures to cast a single vote.  After all, the millions of Trump-supporters will show up.  They'll vote.  They don't need just one more ballot for Trump — not going to make a difference. 

Some Americans might do what's easiest and turn away just this time, just this one moment.  Then, when the door closes, when they're trapped inside with people who are destroying them, hurting their loved ones, killing the country they love, they'll suddenly understand that they allowed this happen.  There will be regrets, but it's too late.  The people are helpless to stop the attack once the intruders are inside.  November 3 will flash before them in a cruel replay of how they turned away for just that one time, for just a moment. 

Or we can all, every single one of us, get to the polls and cast our vote.  We can make the small sacrifice to make the time, find our polling place, stand in line, or be cold for a little while to keep the bad guys out.  That's how we defend our families, our country.  We keep the bad guys out.  

"If there is no enemy within the enemy outside can do us no harm." —Eric Thomas

Image: Tom Arthur via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.