As a prominent conservative Republican politician, I feel it is my duty to address the unpleasantness that occurred at the U.S. Capitol yesterday. It is critical for all of us to register our distress at what happened in a vague and oblique manner, taking care not to reflexively point fingers in anger at those who actually stormed and desecrated the building.

After all, it is not as though they carried banners or wore distinctive clothing or hats indicating who they were or what their possible agenda was. We should not assume that just because they came straight from President Trump’s afternoon harangue telling them to go to the Capitol and that “we’ve got to get rid of these weak congresspeople” that that somehow influenced their somewhat overzealous actions in attacking Capitol police officers, storming the building, raiding lawmakers’ offices, stealing furniture and other souvenirs, carrying weapons and Confederate flags inside and leaving threatening letters.

The disruption of the ceremonial reading of the electoral college votes yesterday was an unfortunate incident brought about by the mysterious divisiveness and hyper-partisanship we are experiencing in this country. We all need to tone down our rhetoric and stop treating one another as enemies the way the fake media, the enemies of the people, the radical left socialist anarchists and Satanic pedophiles who run the Democratic party have done.

While violence is never the answer and all deaths, injuries, destruction of property is regrettable, these things can happen when credulous patriots are inundated for months with phantasmagoric conspiracy theories that could have been conjured up by a slavering street preacher on a bad acid trip. But we cannot simply ignore the delusions of our fellow citizens who believe without any evidence in an enormous voter fraud conspiracy involving multiple state election officials of both parties, election workers all over the country, judges of both parties in some fifty different courts in five separate states (including some appointed by President Trump), the Attorney General of the United States, the media, Hillary Clinton, China, Hugo Chavez and former members of Menudo.

So I implore you. Please let us all duly phone in our our dismay, check off the platitude boxes on bipartisanship, collegiality, love of country, and then continue on exactly as before.