Halloween?

The costumes and masks are real this year: the abominable Sarah-Palin-Baked-Alaska nasaling at the podium and tea-party racists holding out their pinky fingers while kicking back the beer.

Trick or treat means:
reversal of progress at the monsters' behest or the timid continuation of efforts to modernize a country in the grips of religious and ideological fundamentalism. The monsters are afraid and becoming ever more frightening. It's time to drive them out this Halloween, not only in the US, but in Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands as well, which are only those lands that immediately occur to me where similar hate-and-fear-mongering tactics are at work these days.

In the US, the pumpkin will rot or bloom two days after Halloween.