Perhaps you had better things to do and didn’t watch the Republican and Democratic conventions. I confess to hours of viewing while many of you were enjoying quality time with family or friends or by yourself. I present the following highlights of my viewing as a public service.

The little white bandage patches Republicans wore at their convention to honor their wounded warrior seemed to only remind us of how minor his wound had been. Not that the troubled young man’s actions were trivial. They were murderous and made more deadly due to his easy access to weapons of war. No one wanted to talk about the menace these weapons pose in the hands of the wrong people.

The Democrats also had their wounded warrior from gun violence, Gabby Giffords, speak at their convention. The Arizona congresswoman, who still struggles to walk and talk after years of rehabilitation, campaigns tirelessly for new laws to curb gun violence.

The trivialization of the threat of gun violence was again highlighted by the Republican VP candidate when he told a preposterous story about his dear old grandma. How she hid some 19 loaded pistols around the house in order to always have one handy in order to protect her family from evildoers. Who in their right mind would let one of the grandkids visit the home of such a crazy grandma, where unsecured guns were everywhere in easy reach of little hands? The convention crowd, however, loved the story and cheered loudly in response.

Another moment, one almost worthy of a Nuremberg rally of the Third Reich, was the spectacle of thousands of Republican conventioneers waving signs that read “Mass deportation now.” Quite the departure from the spirit of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Does mass deportation really appeal to many Americans, the descendants of so many people who were fleeing poverty and war?

Their presidential candidate concluded the convention with his usual rambling word salad full of insults, wild exaggerations and a series of shameless lies about the election, his felony convictions, his political opponents and silly stories about fictitious cannibals. He barely bothered to mention any serious proposals to solve the nation’s problems.

To be fair, the Democratic Convention, if it didn’t include any truly preposterous claims, did have one very dark shadow looming over it. Thousands of people marched in the streets of Chicago to demand action to end the tragic suffering of the Palestinian people of Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military. Democrats tried for the most part to ignore the demonstrators, because they didn’t want them to dampen the upbeat atmosphere of celebration at their convention.

Kamala Harris, to her credit, did finally declare in her acceptance speech that the Democratic administration did care about the plight of the Palestinian people while it also cared about the safety and security of the Israeli people. She also declared that they were working every day toward securing a peace agreement that could lead to justice for both peoples. Someday, inshallah, god willing, as the Arabs say, it will happen.

The speakers at the Democratic Convention also addressed a host of serious issues from gun violence and drug addiction to global warming and the erosion of individual rights. Democrats particularly emphasized the need to restore eroded personal freedoms. Republicans, on the other hand, urged a return to an earlier time when people relied less on government and abortion was illegal and gay people were expected to hide their identity.

Whether any of this is a good thing or bad is a matter of opinion. Our values, established early in life or molded over time and experience have led us into the one camp or the other in this election year. Some of this is the result of experiences as a person of color or a gay person or a blue collar or a white collar worker in our economy, or as a victim of crime, or as a result of things we have read or seen in real life or on screens.

The two sides in this political contest have now chosen those who will lead the charge and champion their cause. Their respective choices present a stark contrast. The one side has chosen an increasingly unhinged, raging convicted felon and former president, businessman and reality TV star to lead them, and the other side has chosen a levelheaded, cheerful, articulate former prosecutor, attorney general, senator and now the VP of the U.S.

I personally have faith in the collective wisdom of our American electoral process over time, as flawed and unfair as it may seem at any given moment. It requires as many of us as possible to study the issues and vote. This year it matters to our future more than ever before.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.