Before I begin, I want to say that the people demanding immediate transparency from federal agencies have a point. Sunlight is important. That said, I have spent the last three months sitting with the profound discomfort of our current oversight paradigm, and what I have discovered will challenge those who prefer the comfort of certainty.

The Justice Department's latest compliance review represents what I call "performative accountability"—a term I have been developing through careful observation of my own relationship with responsibility. And yet. When I watch federal watchdogs announce they are watching other watchers, I am reminded of my second divorce, when my ex-husband hired a private investigator to investigate whether I was investigating his finances. The real issue was not who was watching whom, but whether anyone understood what we were supposed to be looking for.

I have made the difficult decision to cancel my subscription to three news publications this week—a personal sacrifice that has given me the clarity to see what others cannot. The performative accountability gap in Washington mirrors the same dysfunction I observed when my book club spent six meetings discussing whether we should form a committee to select books. And yet. The committee was never formed, just as meaningful oversight is never actually performed.

Those who prefer the comfort of certainty will tell you that either watchdogs are essential or they are bureaucratic theater. But the readers who are brave enough to find this column challenging understand that both sides are trapped in a false binary. The real performative accountability crisis is not about compliance—it is about our collective inability to admit that we have created a system where watching the watchers has become more important than the watching itself. This is why my succulents keep dying: too much observation, not enough nurturing.

The real question is whether we still know how to talk to each other.