perspective

November 7th is coming - your decisions will fundamentally decide the paths of millions of lives, for years to come! Whatever you do, don't give those bastards control of every branch of the government... *static*

Not to belittle our coming democratic opportunity, but maybe this will help us all feel a little better, or worse, about our place in things:

The universe was formed 13.7 billion years ago.
Nine billion years later, the earth was formed (4.5B years old (YO)).
Six billion years later, life emerged (3B YO).
Five billion, nine-hundred and thirty five years later, primates emerged (65M YO).
58 million years later, hominids started ambling around (7M YO).
57 million, eight-hundred-thousand years later, modern humans became something other than prey for bigger mammals (200K YO).
We relied on killing things and yanking stuff off of trees for the next 192,000 years, before developing agriculture (8K YO). Complex, and sometimes civilized, societies soon followed.
After 5,000 years of sitting around while others grew our food, we thought up democracy (3K YO).
It took another twenty-six hundred years to imagine the careful, observation-and-experiment-based scientific method (300-400 YO).
The United States, a new country based on democratic thought and empowered by science, is 230 years old. A family could have members only six generations apart that fought in both the Revolutionary War and the War on Terror.

So yes, you should always stand up for what you believe in, and your vote does count, as do the actions of our elected representatives...

Just not much.

UPDATE: My snitty little trotting out of mind-boggling stats above did overlook one item that shouldn't ever be diminished. It's well known that Rick Santorum is the personification of It That Has Waited 13.7 Billion Years To Eat Your Soul; as such, a vote against him matters on Nov. 7th. Other than that, it's eventually all a wash.