DATELINE SUNDAY, 5:01 p.m. An actual conversation here late Friday afternoon. Me: “All I want to do this weekend is drink, and watch documentaries.” She: “Does it all have to be documentaries?”

I’m 10 hours of docs in, and running very low on vodka, bourbon and beer.

I’ve always heard it’s bad to drink while writing, but that it’s all right to write while drinking. It’s more productive than doom-scrolling, which is what I’ve also been doing a lot of this weekend. I think I really started worrying when I started to hear and read otherwise sensible people saying the only way a violent American cultural explosion can possibly be defused is by an unequivocal concession by Trump that the election was legitimate.

Perhaps with some kind of legal gun to his head, Trump could be bribed into making one of those hostage teleprompter statements like the one he did after Charlottesville, saying in a robotic voice that he does not, indeed, believe the election turned on widespread voter fraud and calling on his supporters to stand down. But that would convince no one—would almost be a dog-whistle wink that would only egg his people on.

But I think I came up with something that might make a difference. Might.

Mike Pence must make the speech of his life, and he must make it in the next few days. Trading on his thus-far perfect public allegiance to Trump (his refusal last week to do the impossible for Trump notwithstanding), Pence must give a “confessions of a loyal VP” speech, and issue a call for sanity. In revelatory detail, Pence must do something along these lines and in this order:

Reveal he and his wife spent the entire weekend in prayer, asking the Almighty for guidance on whether to invoke the 25th amendment on Trump—and in fact, on larger questions than that.

Explain the philosophy that led him to go along with Trump at many untoward moments during his presidency, listing some of the most difficult examples. List what redeeming achievements of the Trump administration he is still proud to have contributed to.

Share the inside story of Trump’s strategy and thinking and private statements about the election, and his charges of voter fraud. Again, a specific account exposing firsthand experience of Trump’s purposeful misleading of his base, Trump’s genuine madness, or both—and Pence’s gathering horror at same.

Expressing his own regret and stupidity with the maximum Christian humility he can muster, describe the moment he realized he could no longer abide the lies, because he realized firsthand their consequences as he fled the Capitol last week, for his life.

Acknowledge to Trump supporters that he realizes the last-minute confession may lack credibility—but ask them to consider the speech on its own merits—and the greater sacrifice involved in making it.

And then he must call them to action other than tearing the Capitol up and their country down over Trump’s essential election lie—but the more responsible, constructive, peaceful action they know in their heart is right.

At that point, it wouldn’t much matter whether Pence invoked the 25th amendment or not. He would have done much more with his words. It would be the least he can do to avert serial violence like we saw Wednesday—and maybe, at this point, the most anyone can do.

Don’t bother listing the problems with the above idea, I already know: I’m drinking, not tripping.

A friend says it wouldn’t make a whit of difference because Trump’s hard-core crowd sees Pence as the enemy. I think such a speech could draw a bright cultural line that Trump’s less gun-horny followers won’t cross, marginalizing the camo crowd further.

I’m wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.

The very dumbest thing I heard yesterday, all day, was surprise. Over and over—from Rick Santorum to Ben Sasse to Mitt Romney—the shock and wonder of it all. How did we get here? This is not who we are!

We know goddamned well how we got here. And this is definitely who some of us are—and who some of us always have been.

Someone wrote to me a few hours into the scene yesterday afternoon, saying I’d predicted this all along. I thought, “I can’t believe I bothered to.”

I am not very smart. I’m sure I know nothing more than you know about the people in that scene, no less and no more.

They are not truly desperate people, just dysfunctional ones. Did you see any truly poor people out in those scenes yesterday? It would have been easier to find an English major. These guys all looked like owners of man-caves, or at least of big-screen TVs. Yesterday was and always will be by far, the most exciting day of most of their lives.

They don’t have a fraction of the courage of John Lewis or the spiritual principle of Martin Luther King. Though I hope a lot of these people go to jail, there will be no Letters from a Birmingham Jail coming out.

All day, watching these people, my own facial recognition technology kept taking me back to the hapless plotters hanged after the Lincoln assassination.

I didn’t disagree with Chuck Schumer when he compared this to Pearl Harbor. It was terribly upsetting; watching these scenes, my heart was pounding just like yours. But it’s more traumatic as a graphic image of something we’d known existed for a long time.

The world was also on fire on December 6, 1941, but it took this to get a country off its ass.

A friend writes on Facebook, “I heard a very poignant question today: Is this the end of a period of time that represents evil, or is it the start of one? I’m hanging on to a shred of hope given the election results. But fear today is the start of many dark days ahead.”

I don’t think so.

These people are not hungry enough, fit enough, smart enough or courageous enough to carry out a whole war. They’re horny, more like. Horny for mayhem. And as much trouble as they can cause, horny men do not a movement make. So we’ll see an occasional terrorist attack from individual nutbags, or pockets of them, and we will have to endure that, as we always have. Remember Oklahoma City? Hell, remember Nashville?

Meanwhile, the question is, will the shock of what the rest of us saw yesterday—everyone’s near-tearful dismay—turn the rest of our eyes, if not in admiration of a common vision of America the Beautiful, at least in condemnation of a shared image of America the Terrible?

I allow myself to hope, because I must.

Over the holidays, my book received a positive advance review from Kirkus Reviews.

“With a firm command of U.S. politics and history and a matching wit, the author’s short essays present keen insights on figures ranging from President Donald Trump to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel …

“Though politics is Murray’s bailiwick, it is his later reflections on the importance of communication in one’s personal life that stand out. Essays on the value and intersection of effective communication with marriage, grief, and technology provide a poignancy that transcends politics. …

“A smart, witty account of America’s failure to communicate.”

I received that not with pathetic gratitude or over-the-moon excitement, but with a satisfied nod. I mean, this is my best work. It had better be smart and witty.

“Imagine how bummed you’d be if the review was bad,” my pal Mike said.

Exactly the point—except “bummed” might not be the word.

I’ve read about writers enraged or crushed by bad reviews.

“I will hate you till the day I die, and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make,” said Alain de Botton to a New York Times reviewer of his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. “I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.”

Just a little more succinctly, Martin Amis said of a reviewer of his novel Yellow Dog: “Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch. Oh yeah: and a fat-arse.”

I hope I don’t get any bad reviews, because relevant past behavior indicates that I will be Amis-like in my response.

There have been just a couple of times in my career when I felt someone unfairly threatened my reputation and thus my livelihood. One of those times, I dreamed that I flew to the maligner’s city and strangled him at his desk; I still remember the look of surprise on his face. The other time, I actually took the Chicago Avenue bus downtown, stormed a mile up Michigan Avenue, burst into the office, waved the guy into a conference room and expressed my outrage with such ferocity that he began to hyperventilate and I had to calm him down.

Anyway, I was pleased with the Kirkus review.