Politics is bad performance art

I sometimes like performance art. It is always specific to and dependent on the actor. Generally, it makes a point while telling a story to the audience. Performance art sometimes offers messages that I don’t agree with, but I appreciate it as a very creative form of political protest.

Of course, some of the TikTok challenges we’ve seen and episodes of “Jackass” are forms of performance art, and I think they’re stupid. But my point is, I don’t mind performance art, but I’m tired of those big marble-and-sandstone columned buildings in Washington, DC being used as theaters for performance art, and our elected officials being used as actors. Don’t they have better things to do?

With less than six months until the national election, real governance has come to a complete halt in Washington while our money and time are spent on election drama.

This week, Democrats in the U.S. Senate introduced a poorly worded and constructed bill with a “vote-getting” title: the “Birth Control Rights Act.” Well, of course we need to protect women’s right to access contraception! Is that really the case? Is there an actual threat of access? No, there isn’t, and there never will be. This bill was drafted to put Republicans on record as voting against it, but all but two voted against it, so it could be used in campaign ads and materials. This bill accomplishes nothing beyond what it already accomplishes today. The bill is worded vaguely enough that it could apply to other things, including abortion pills, and the two issues should not be conflated, regardless of one’s stance on abortion pills.