The next election is not an existential event for the United States. Neither is the one after that — or the one after that. But that won’t stop American politicians from claiming otherwise, nor anxiety-ridden voters from believing them.

For at least the last decade, our politics has been gripped by a malady I call “The-End-Is-Near-ism.” It’s fueled by Democrats and Republicans (incumbents, candidates, activists) declaring the next election the most important of our lifetime. That’s how the fever starts, anyway. Then, as the body politic’s temperature rises, we’re told the election is that important because if the opposition wins, the U.S. as we know it will cease to exist. Lately, we’ve been told that the next election is more important than all the rest because, if the opposition wins, there might not be more elections.

Paul Sracic, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, calls this phenomenon “Armageddon politics,” explaining to me in an email exchange that the danger this attitude poses “lies not just in its rhetoric but in the actions it inspires.”