Don't Just Do Something

“I don't know what the answer is,” Kacey Musgraves shouted during her set at Lol­ lapalooza on August 7, “but obviously something has to be fucking done.”

- Katherine Mangu-ward

The country music star then led her fans in a chant that perfectly encapsulates the future of American politics: “Somebody fucking do something!” she screamed. “Somebody fucking do something!” the crowd screamed back.

Musgraves was, understandably, upset about the horrific back­to­back mass mur­ ders that took place the first weekend of August in El Paso and Dayton. She did not offer a specific something to be done. This may have been an attempt to appear non­ partisan, it may have been honest uncer­ tainty, or it may just have been a sensible intuition that the middle of a music fes­ tival was not the right place to workshop public policy.

But the something matters an awful lot. In this case—and in so many others—“do something” actually means “do some­ thing to other people.” It means “force other people to do something they don’t want to do, even if you’re not sure it will actually help.” The call to “do something” privileges action over analysis and man­ datory one­size­fits­all solutions over incremental, local, and voluntary action.

The list of somethings to be done post­ shooting is familiar enough: Stop the sale (or possibly possession) of certain fire­ arms, make ever­larger lists of people who are not allowed to own firearms at all, and regulate speech—especially “hate speech,” especially online, and maybe video games while we’re at it. As