It would probably be a good thing to stop and take a deep breath. This election season is making us all overwrought.

There was a United States before the first 2016 presidential campaign was launched, and there will be a United States after the last 2016 yard sign is put out in the trash.

In the meantime, the slightest occurrence is magnified far beyond its actual importance, and partisan blood pressures spike from sea to shining sea.

The 24/7 news cycle has a lot to do with it, as does the Balkanization of news coverage itself.

Not so many years ago, the news came in little half-hour bites, even less counting commercials. You watched Uncle Walter on CBS, or Frank on ABC, or Chet and David on NBC. Whoever was your favorite, they came across pretty much down the middle. They were observers, rather than players, who never considered themselves to be part of the action itself.

Every little hiccup was not analyzed and masticated ad infinitum for the simple reason that there wasn’t enough time available to pontificate interminably.

Certainly this is not the case today. The beast needs to be fed, and if you don’t care for the first version of the truth you hear, feel free to change the channel for an alternate version more to your liking.

As this is written, the sky-is-falling issue of the day is the fact that Donald Trump’s campaign manager has been arrested on a CRIMINAL CHARGE of simple assault. Run for the hills!

Oh, come on. Any first-year law student can tell you that simple assault, i.e. “an unwarranted, unconsented touching of another in a rude and insolent manner,” is at the very bottom of the criminal food chain. Socially objectionable, surely. The act of a boor, most definitely. Does it rank up there with the San Bernardino shooters? I think not.

In the normal course of things, should a prosecutor decide to file charges at all, the perpetrator will probably pay some fees to go into a pretrial diversion program, keep his nose clean for a year or so, and that will be that. The charge goes away.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking a whack at the media. As President Obama noted this week, news is a business. If the current state of affairs is representative of the accepted business model, who am I to take issue?

I am more concerned about us – you and me – and how we react to all that is being thrown at us.

Just because so much in today’s political discourse is described in apocalyptic terms does not mean we have to react in an apocalyptic manner. The danger is that if we engage in knee-jerk reactions to all of the sound and fury, we become trigger-happy, ready to storm or defend the barricades, depending on the issue, at the drop of a hat.

Acting in heat is rarely the wisest course of action.

The fact some of the candidates are unable to treat each other with civility is no excuse for us not to treat each other with civility here at home.

Here’s the thing. We, the body politic, are the strength, and at the same time, the Achilles heel, of this republic. If we maintain our equilibrium, what happens between the politicians, the pundits, and the talking heads is largely irrelevant, because they need us more than we need them. For them to achieve their ends, they have to come to us. It’s called an election.

Our job is to have the presence of mind to choose between the alternatives served up for our consideration. That’s what the framers had in mind — a belief that the people, given the chance and resources, were fully capable of ruling themselves without being told what to do by a political or social elite.

On the other hand, if we lose our heads and go off halfcocked, reacting impulsively to each passing dust devil, we increase instability and enhance the chances we become nothing more sheep for the shearing.

Bottom line, for a little while, lay down the flags and the bunting. Take off the angry buttons. Remove the bumper stickers pledging allegiance to one political tribe or another.

Do you believe in this republic or not?

If you do, do you believe it so fragile that the addition of a liberal-leaning justice, the elevation of a social democrat, or even the election of a bombastic and totally unqualified New York real estate magnate to the presidency, spells its doom?

The answer, so long as we hold faith with each other, is an emphatic “no.”

If that mutual reliance is lost, and there’s reason to fear that process has already begun, there are very dark days ahead.

Perhaps the best advice is not all that complicated.

Chill out.