The silly season is almost over

Each week for the past few months, as I have sat down to write this column I have promised myself that this week I would not talk about the pending elections. It hasn't worked out very well, since I have written about that very topic on nearly every occasion.

Well, it's all almost over now, and not a moment too soon if you ask me. We are constantly barraged with declarations that an event is the best/worst/biggest/smallest ever, and it has been no different in the incredibly long run-up to next week's vote.

Depending on who you ask, McCain or Obama are poised to ruin the country. Nay, the world. Casting your vote for McCain/Obama is the single most important thing you will ever do. Nothing less than our children's future depends on it.

To this, I say hooey.

Which is not to say that John McCain or Barack Obama might not drive our planet to ruin. They might. But they stand no greater or worse chance than any other leader has.

In the feeding frenzy of the 24-hour news cycle, the media has no choice but to implore its audience to believe that what is happening is unbelievable! Unfathomable! Unprecedented! If it weren't, it probably wouldn't be news, and your eyeballs wouldn't be looking at the advertisements stuffed between proclamations of "-ests."

Certainly times are trying. With troops deployed in combat around the world and the global economy having spasms, the stakes are high. But are they higher than during the height of the Cold War? The Industrial Revolution? The collapse of the Roman Empire? Maybe, maybe not.

It is, I suppose, more important to us. After all, many of us weren't even born during the worst of the standoff with the Soviets. The Romans are ancient history.

And why shouldn't this be the most important election in the most important nation in the most important time in history? With the huge strides being made in science and technology and the fast pace of modern life, (not to mention the ability to blow up our own planet that we've acquired in the last 100 years) maybe this vote comes at the most important moment history has ever seen.

Only time will tell. But as the silly season reaches its fever pitch this week, cast your vote and relax. We've been here before.

—Alex Strickland