This piece is an hypothetical apology by a Republican politician for creating the environment where Donald Trump could be nominated as the party's nominee and get so very close to the White House.

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Below is what some brave Republican should say, and say it soon. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever hear it.

(written before election day, with the assumption that Donald Trump loses to Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election).

Dear American People,

I want to say something that is a long time coming. We have endured the last eight years and more of extreme partisanship, which has led to extreme political dysfunction in our country, has virtually grounded growth and brought change to a standstill. While at the exact time, the world is moving faster than ever, and important change is needed more than ever, and at a faster pace than ever before.

We are dangerously close to a major disaster in our country, with the nomination of Donald Trump as Republican nominee, and his near ascendancy to the Presidency of the United States. We have come close to the edge of the abyss, have peaked around the corner at what might have been, and we don't like what we felt and almost became.

So I have something to say to our fellow Republicans, those who have stood by their principles and values, and to the rest of the American people, who have been in shock this past year, not believing what they were seeing with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears.

You see, our country is at a crossroads. We have become more and more divided, maybe more so than any time since the Civil War. We are divided politically, culturally, ethnically, religiously, and spiritually.

We need a healing in this country, because on so many issues, and in so many ways, we are growing apart. And if we do not make a conscious effort, now, right now, to come together, I'm afraid we will become further alienated from each other, maybe to the point of no return, and self-destruct, ruining this wonderful, amazing country we all inherited.

We need a reconciliation of this great country of ours. And so today, I would like to begin that reconciliation.

So with regret, remorse and humility, for all of us who brought us to the edge of this disaster, we sincerely apologize to the American people. Our party, while not solely to blame, has been a large part of the problem, and today, here today, we want to do our part to rectify that, so we can begin the long, slow process of healing and reconciliation.

We are sorry. We are deeply sorry for the many ways our party has behaved for at least the last decade or two.

First, specifically, we apologize for having created the atmosphere where a Donald Trump could become our party's nominee. We did this by letting him begin and continue the ugly Birther movement, and although virtually none of us believed it, we let him continue on without condemnation because we thought it would be politically good for our party. It turns out it was not good for the party, and was even worse for the country. We put our party ahead of nation, and that was wrong. We deeply apologize.

Second, we personally want to apologize to President Obama and his family, and the entire African American community for not speaking out and condemning the Birther language and its subsequent innuendo. By not speaking out, we tacitly gave our approval of such behavior. It was, in retrospect, abominable. We allowed Mr. Trump and others to perpetuate the myth that President Obama was not a legitimate President. Worse than that, we sat back while the lie was continued that he was not even a legitimate citizen. This harkens back to one of the darkest silo's in our country's history, when at our founding,, without conscious of thought or feeling, we condemned an entire race of not only being non-American, but of not being human. For this, we are ashamed.

Third, we apologize for the subtle and sometimes not so subtle racism not only hurled toward African Americans, but of other ethnic groups as well in recent years, especially those of Hispanic origins and Muslim faith. Again, too many of us sat by and said nothing, while the far right element of our party, maybe in a softer or subtler way, continued on our centuries old prejudices toward non-whites. It was beyond wrong and it helped create and grow the Tea Party and eventually, the Trump phenomena. This was unforgiveable, and we sincerely apologize.

Fourth, we apologize specifically for not condemning Mr. Trump from the very beginning of his candidacy for the dozens and dozens of racist statements, misogynistic statements against women, and for his unprofessional, inappropriate, and outrageous behavior, behavior that is not befitting for a person running not just for President, but for any office, or employment in any capacity of our country. His behaviors and remarks would have disqualified him for any other government or private sector job, and the citizens of this country knew it. You were perplexed how someone so unqualified could even be in the realm of possibility of running for President of the United States. You knew he would not pass an interview for any job in the government, any executive position, any mid-management positions, or even any lower skilled job. Yet, we leaders put up with his words and behavior as a candidate for President of the United States and said nothing, or even worse, defended him. His debate appearances in the both the primaries and the general election were despicable, and he would have been reprimanded and removed from even a junior high school debate. He has embarrassed us in front of all Americans, and he has embarrassed our country to the world. For two and half centuries we have modeled freedom, capitalism, democracy, and a working two party system built on mutual respect and dignity. We allowed Mr. Trump to expose our worst tendencies, to show the worst part of ourselves. We truly, truly regret this decision.

Fifth, we take responsibility for being a primary culprit in undermining our citizenry's respect for our sacred institutions, by creating the narrative that much of the problems of our country were the fault of government itself. For two decades we have fostered this false proposition even while, hypocritically, so many of us were the government. While we believe in smaller government, we used the Democrat's position of advocating for larger or more extensive government to create the myth that the government itself should not be trusted, just in order to attain an upper hand with our citizens. This was wrong and has created decades of apathy and distrust of our governmental and political systems, discouraging most of our best and brightest from joining public service, leaving us a diluted pool of public servants, not nearly representative of the bold and brilliant citizens of this land.

Sixth, we continued this narrative by demonizing and de-legitimizing the media. While we do believe there has been media bias, with many of our media institutions leaning toward the left, we have savaged the reputation of a free press. Most persons who work in the media are good people, and have good intentions. We have promoted the exact opposite. Unfortunately, we succeeded and have undermined the sanctity of the press itself, which was supposed to be watchdog for the people, so we in government could not covertly manipulate the masses. By feeding this distrust, we help create the isolated news organizations which only spew one point of view. While this may have been inevitable with the creation of cable news and the internet, we certainly did not help the situation, and in fact, did help create the intolerance many people feel toward the media.

We especially regret supporting far right wing media figures, who spew such hate and intolerance throughout the airwaves. In retrospect, we believe history will show how these large media personalities and magnets fueled of much of the loss of dignity and respect between the two parties. While the left has had its share of one sided demagoguery, nothing can compare to the right wing talk show hosts. They bear the brunt much of the blame of our current situation, and the creation of Mr. Trump, as it became the political norm to not just to disagree with our opponents, but to hate them. But, we the leaders, again, stood idly by, and allowed them to be the voice of the party. We sincerely regret our silence.

Seventh, we started to believe that we could no longer compromise with the Democrats, because we would be compromising with the Devil. At some point in our battles of the last few decades, we went from believing that our opponent were wrong, to believing that they were evil. And how can you negotiate with evil? We believed that incremental change was bad change. That it was a dereliction of our beliefs. It had to be all or nothing. So we stopped compromising and felt that if we waited it out long enough, fought long enough, we would have all three branches of government on our side, and then we could implement the changes we thought were correct, turn back the social progress of the past decades, and create a world again in the way we envisioned it.

Eighth, in doing so, we forgot one of the great principals of our country, the separation of Church and State, and we let our love and devotion of our religion, get in the way of our love and devotion to our country. The result of this has hurt many people, and for this we deeply apologize. Our country was built on compromise and we should have continued that tradition. We take much of the blame for the political stagnation and dysfunction of these last few decades. So much more could and should have been done.

Before I finish, I feel it a duty to mention two specific issues which we Republicans advocated for, even though we knew it was not in the best interest of the country.

Number 9. We apologize for our extreme stance on guns. We love the second Amendment, and we believe law abiding citizens have the right to bear arms for recreation and protection. But we also know there is no reason that just as every car has to be registered, that every gun should be as well. We have told the public that what Democrats really want is to take away all our guns, and that is simply not true. We all know there is nothing wrong with reasonable gun regulation, eliminating loopholes in registration, and eliminating military style weapons from our streets.

And finally, Number 10. We Republican are citizens of the United States in the year 2016. We understand technology, business, economics, and yes, we understand science. We have laid down our senses, and convinced an under-educated population, to not believe in science. That was wrong. When 99 percent of all scientists say, that humans, and human behavior has affected our environment, it defies logic, for us not to listen. While we do believe that much of climate change is a natural phenomenon and still remain skeptical whether or not new human behavior can stop such changes, we do, here and now, pledge to stop the rhetoric that man has not contributed to the changing climate. We should, together, be reasonable in looking at ways we can make the planet as ecologically stable as possible.

We have been silent. In this silence, most of us did not reflect on how detrimental these behaviors or lack of behaviors would be to the American political system or the American psyche. We did not think of the damaging, long ranging affect it would have. We thought of only one thing - how we could obtain an advantage over the Democrats. We thought they were our enemy, not realizing that our true enemy is racism, sexism, poverty, disease, natural disasters, obstacles to education and medical attention for all, obstacles to creating a strong economy, and dealing with bad actors around the world. This was short sighted, egotistical, narcissistic, self-serving, and just wrong. We are deeply, deeply sorry.

We are in a new century, the fourth century of this great nation. Change is coming faster than we have ever known. We used to have major changes every one hundred years. Then, in the twentieth century, change came every few decades. Now, with our digital world, we change every few years. Many of the old questions are no longer relevant, and there are new answers that we have yet to find.

It is time to redefine our society. We Republicans realize that we have been a large part of the problem. We need to work together with Democrats and Independents to solve our problems.

So again, for many of us Republicans, we want to say, for the first time and not the last time, we are sorry. We have mislead ourselves and we have mislead the American people and we have done harm to our great nation.

Mr. Trump's ascendancy to the nomination for President of the United States, and his close brush with victory, has been a wake-up call. We created the environment for someone like him to be successful, and we did it so for personal gain, and so our party could be successful, over and above what was best for the country as a whole and the American people.

Today I ask all Republicans to join with me, in this apology to the American people. Pledge to work with Democrats, Independents, and everyone and anyone who is looking to make our country better. We can still hold on to our values, while we look at different ways of implementing solutions, as we discover new answers to new questions in this new century.

Authors Bio:

Dan J Shapiro is an entrepreneur, businessman, musician speaker and writer. He is a jazz pianist, and singer songwriter and has toured nationally with a major group.
He has started over a dozen businesses in the assisted living world and has spoken publicly on a myriad of issues.