How many times can you hear it?

This is the most “important” election of our lifetime.

Are things bad? Sure seems like it. Sure feels like it.

But in the vast history of this, our planet earth, we’ve probably experienced millions of potential tipping points. The clock always seems to read somewhere between five and seven minutes to midnight.

Doomsday is just around the corner.

Propelled by a media that abuses the medium for the purposes of ratings that return a financial windfall, we’re sucked into a web of negativity. And like the sheep we are, we digest this poison and ask for more.

Essentially, we are backfeeding our future, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of negativity across all forms of relationships. From our unique self “we” to the collective “we” as Americans.

Long before the rise of Donald Trump, we went negative. We went nationalist and extremist and chided others for not thinking like we do. It’s all right there in our social media feeds. We have been doing this dance inside America for a long time. Every time we slam somebody else we’re creating divisiveness. And over some of the most inconsequential topics imaginable – like sports or professions.

So when you act shocked how someone like Donald Trump could be the leading Republican candidate for President of the United States, you shouldn’t be.

Oh, you can be stunned by how it got this far, not vote for him, and not agree with anything he says. Because the truth is, rhetoric is more than just words when it comes from a candidate trying to be elected to one of the highest positions of power in the world.

But understand all the same we created these candidates, and the vacuum that allowed them to waltz into our lives. It’s like a bad joke: “A billionaire, two liars, and a socialist walk into a bar…” – and I don’t think we want to stick around for the punchline.

Ironically, we seem to want someone who plays nice in the sandbox, except we don’t play nice in the sandbox ourselves.

Our celebrity culture, our reality-era need for confrontation paved the way for Trump. Our own inferiority complexes made this possible. We mock Trump for his paranoia over the size of his hands, yet we take five selfies until we get the right angle so our chin doesn’t look fat.

We want to tell people to shut up sometimes. And increasingly with social media, we do. We want to call someone who annoys us, and doesn’t see things our way, something condescending, like, ‘Little Marco’ for instance.

We attack people who we think show too many pictures of their kids. We attack people who we think show too many pictures of their dogs or cats. We attack people who root for another sports team or player or coach we don’t like. We mock, we belittle, we deride with smarm and sarcasm, with passive-aggressive undertones. And then when the other party gets offended, we tell them to relax, that was “all in fun” or just “a joke.”

So, you see, there’s a little bit of The Donald in all of us, like it or not.

It doesn’t mean he’s a quality candidate for President of the United States. It means there is a very obvious reason he’s even a candidate for President of the United States.

This same analysis can be applied to Bernie Sanders. A truly shocking number of people – the vast majority of them young – “feel the Bern.”

And truthfully, this phenomenon should be far more concerning than the “Make America Great Again” reality show of Donald Trump.

The short-term and long-term proposition that millions of young Americans are flocking to the polls to vote for a white socialist in his mid-70s, who has unapologetically defended socialism all over the world, should be beyond frightening for Americans.

Never mind the truth that we’ve neglected to apparently teach millennials what socialism truly is, and what it can do. It reads like a utopia, but looks and smells like a dirty trash can filled with poo.

Currently, 20 percent of the world’s population continues to live under communist regimes, in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos and North Korea. Not surprisingly, they also remain the largest violators of human rights in history. The opposition suppressed, detained, imprisoned, murdered.

You want to really be scared? Nearly 73% of Americans couldn’t tell you the cause of the Cold War just five years ago. That’s a question asked on the test for official U.S. Citizenship. Guaranteed, that number has gone up.

And if you are one of those, put down the Candy Crush and pick-up any text from your junior year high school history class.

How could we ever arrive at a point that we’re falling for the false sirens of socialism? Perhaps it begins with participation ribbons and trophies. We coddle ourselves. We are all special and unique in our own way, sure, but that doesn’t mean little Johnny didn’t work 10 times harder than little Timmy in order to rise to the top of the ranks. And this doesn’t just apply to sports. The valedictorian earned their As, the kid who didn’t study earned their C-.

That’s America. Or at least it was.

Now, we are an America that apparently thinks it is cool to hang out with Cuba, despite their political affiliation, despite their horrid human rights history and despite the violence and unspeakable poverty taking place in the streets outside the stadium where a baseball game was played yesterday, with our president wearing some shades and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the stands.

The island in the sun, where everyone is completely equal, and treated equal, and lives a life of equality is a mirage. That mirage is socialism. There is no incentive. What’s yours is mine.

And forget being what you want to be. Want to be a doctor? Tough. Janitor. Want to be a janitor? Sorry, pig farmer. Want to be a pig farmer? Sorry, accountant.

You’ll be told what your role is by someone else. Identity and self-worth are stripped away. You are not an individual; you are just another person to keep the government functioning. A government that provides you with what little you have, which is the exact same as everyone else, no matter how hard you work or what you do, so you might want to watch what you say and where you say it, too. Don’t try and do it through art or music or literature, either.

Our American ancestors fought over 240 years ago for freedom from oppression and tyranny. Countries and citizens of nations the world over have begged and fought for freedom through generations, and once they got it, exposed the horrors of how fascism, socialism and communism ruined their lives, their families and their country.

But no one watches “60 Minutes” anymore, we’re too busy keeping up with Kardashians.

And now we have a majority of a generation who want to bring to that kind of political system to the ultimate beacon of freedom, the United States, just so they don’t have to pay for college or healthcare.

Never mind that it will be a college experience devoid of individual analysis and thought, where subjects and courses will be selected and pre-screened by the government…actually, wait, in socialism, is there even a need for college?

Must be why it’s free.

We are spoiled and entitled brats. Most of you reading won’t finish the 1,700 words in this blog – I know, you’ve got to get back to Facebook’s version of America’s funniest home videos.

But that is the vacuum we created that allowed us to feel the Bern.

Socialism, for in practice often known as communism, strips the mind, the body and the soul of individuality, of incentive, of self-worth.

But we don’t read Orwell anymore. Animal Farm probably invokes thoughts of a children’s book and 1984 is just a year in the past.

When the Cold War ended, there was an enormous drop-off in mass killings around the globe. When the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University researched this through a task force, it found the reason was because millions were freed from communism and police states at that time.

Despite what you read and hear through the media, mass killings around the globe have remained low for over 20 years. In fact, the 2010s are the some of the lowest in history.

But our younger, millennial brethren were born after all this Cold War mumbo jumbo. The Day After Tomorrow is more plausible to younger Americans than WarGames. Anyone younger than 28 doesn’t remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. To them, it is just text and pictures in a book.

Sanders will most likely not win this election. But millenials will take over as the largest sub-demographic of America in the not so distant future. And not one of them ever had a siren test for a nuclear war in grade school. This primary season should serve as warning to the disconnect we’ve created in our society.

We cannot protect and coddle anymore. There are no more participation trophies to give.

To be sure, America has its share of problems and issues. There will never be a utopia here on earth because of the humans that inhabit it. We are not perfect, nor will we ever be. We should always strive to do the best we can to care for one another, to root out injustice wherever possible and reduce the violent nature that stirs within the souls of the lost and help bring hope to the hopeless.

But do not mistake that kindness, that good intent, with willing subjugation.

Americans work hard. We compete. We push ourselves and go for our dreams. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. We’re gamblers, boundary-pushers and risk-takers.

But this isn’t Manor Farm.

If we’re going to become the anti-thesis of what we are and what we have been, if we’re going to backfeed into some twisted version of the future that is as dystopian as the media portrays, then I guess given the choice, there is no choice.

Better to let the clock tick to 11:58pm than have a society so lazy and unmotivated it just rolls over and falls back asleep when the alarm goes off.

Hitting snooze doesn’t save us.

Get up, America. It is time to get to work.

This is your Bern Notice.