Occasionally you come upon a story that asks you to take the bait. You read a teaser and you know you should let it go, but something inside tells you to scratch that itch. The parents from the Uvalde shooting were in Washington trying to get something done on gun control. They were handing out pins. When it came to handing one to Lauren Boebert you could probably have predicted how well that would go.

There are any number of reasons why this story shouldn’t be told. The first and best reason is that this is exactly what she wants. She wants to be the center of attention. She wants a majority of the country to think she is a despicable person. It’s what trolls do. The second reason is that we know she would never vote for gun control anyway, so it really doesn’t impact our day to day lives any. It is just an excuse to become more aggrivated and upset. I wanted to throw out these two caveats before giving her exactly what she wants.

The parents of Maite Rodriguez made lapel pins of their daughter’s shoe for lawmakers to wear to honor her memory and urge them to act on her behalf and provided pamphlets asking lawmakers to act. As the story went, that was the only way they could identify her in the aftermath. Let’s be fair here. This is an obvious manipulation. Wearing the pin means you support common sense gun legislation. If you don’t and you still wear the pin then you are just being a liar to score cheap political points. What she should have done is graciously accept the pin, simply not wear it, and then discard it in her office or home.

Boebert can be clearly seen in video throwing the pin away within eyeshot of the families that were there. What she should do is be respectful of them. It’s a basic lesson we were all taught growing up. All of us have received gifts that were just hideous. We had the presence of mind and manners to say thank you and wait until we got home to discard the item.

It’s at this point where we have to move to idle speculation. Maybe Boebert wasn’t taught that growing up. We know she dropped out of school because she became a teenage mom. We know the hot water her husband and her got into earlier in life. We know her son impregnated a girl that she would only say “is older than 14.” Given all this, it is fair to ask what manners she was taught. When we consider her academic record it is also fair to say that she could have been taught but she just didn’t learn.

On the other hand, this may not be a question of manners. It may be a question of performance art. Socrates called himself a “gadfly” in Plato’s Republic and in other assorted works that described his life and work. Gadfly seems to highbrow for Boebert. We could instead call her an ass. In that world, whoever can say or do the most outlandish thing wins. Congratulations Lauren, you’ve won that label for today.

I’m obviously late to the party with this one. As everyone knows, Governor Greg Abbott sent his own version of a Christmas gift to Kamala Harris when he sent upwards of 50 migrants in a bus to her Washington D.C. residence. I can easily go in any number of directions here and most of them are visceral emotional reactions to the story. Most of these visceral responses are the kind of responses that MAGA folks want us to say. It’s almost like a Pavlovian response. They do something outrageous and we respond with outrage, Mission accomplished.

So, where I choose to go from here is to a place where I am going to assume that one or more of them might stumble to this place and actually read these words. The regular readers already know this stuff, so you can treat this as more of a tutorial for other people. However, it is something I feel I need to say because I’ve seen the responses from both sides. Progressives respond with outrage as I suppose they should. Conservatives usually say something to the effect that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden need to solve the problem.

Let’s start with the outrage. All of us know about trolls. Essentially, mainstream conservatives are becoming an endangered species. In their place are what I lovingly call performance artists. If you think back to the scandals concerning the National Endowment for the Arts you will remember the different exhibits that caused so much consternation. There were sculptures of Jesus made out of dung or Jesus being submerged in human urine. These were all designed to create a visceral reaction. All forms of art are created to elicit a reaction. So, these maneuvers by Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are created to elicit an emotional response. Again, mission accomplished.

Performance artists aren’t interested in solving any problems. Problems exist to be exploited. They exist for fund raising. They exist for sound bytes. They exist so that you can frighten your base by expanding and distorting the truth. Greg Abbott has no issue in solving immigration. He has no interest in helping migrants. He has no interest in adjusting policies so that the strain on our institutions and budget are alleviated. Of course, it could be credibly claimed that many progressive politicians aren’t interested in solving the problem either. They can fundraise against Abbott and DeSantis as easily as those two can fundraise themselves.

This brings us to the second point. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t solve this issue on their own. It’s a problem with the low information voters. This is an issue that must be addressed in Congress. So, you can send these people to the White House or to Kamala Harris’ private residence, but the stunt doesn’t provide them any additional incentive to solve the problem. Harris literally has very little real power to do anything beyond helping those exact people. This is where you call or write letters to your elected representative asking them to work with other members of Congress to actually pass comprehensive changes to our immigration policy.

Whether one considers this just performance art or an act of cruelty, the end result is just the same. Someone decided that jerking these people around was better than actually helping them. At this point, I’m not going to judge if someone decides they can’t help them. I understand. We can’t help literally everyone that needs help and it can be hard to decide where that cut off should be. They are human beings. They deserve better than this. If we can’t help them then the least we can do is not hurt them. It’s one thing to have a sculpture made out of dung to enrage the masses. It is something else entirely to use actual living and breathing human beings for your performance art.