Is there symbolism in everything Melania Trump does, or not? Is Melania Trump playing five-dimensional chess against the rest of her checkers-playing family, or not? Will we ever know? Does it even matter? Does your pointed commentary about the administration’s immigration policy matter, if, to understand you’ve commented at all, the American public must intimately know the shopping habits of your grown stepdaughter?

Truly, which is the more unsettling interpretation of Melania Trump? That all of the odd stuff she’s done has been intentional, but she’s bizarrely choosing to communicate in fashion code, rather than to communicate using any one of the five human languages she speaks? Or that she has no plan at all — that she wakes up and throws on pussy bows and sloganed jackets, and nobody surrounding her thinks to say, Hmm? That the rest of the country is merrily rolling toward pandemonium, and meanwhile she’s again planning her holiday decorations six months in advance?

I have wondered whether Melania Trump is a genius. I have wondered whether she’s an idiot. I have wondered why I wonder about her at all.