When there's a terrible tragedy — and especially if it's man-made, like a terrorist attack — most politicians and pundits go through a two-stage process. Step One is to express sympathy and regrets…some variation on "Let us pray for the victims and their loved ones and not politicize this horrible thing." Step Two is to politicize the horrible thing. Somewhere out there, there's a guy who has been campaigning to lower the cost of dog licenses who is now trying to figure out how to explain that lowering the cost of dog licenses would have prevented the terrorist attack in Nice, France.
It's always kinda been like this but every time we have one of these lately, the time between Step One and Step Two gets a little shorter. People now are able to do them in the same 140-character Tweet.
I have no idea what to do about terrorist attacks…but you wouldn't expect me to since that's not even remotely close to my line of work and alleged expertise. What's scary is that it seems like a lot of folks who should have some idea don't have any more of a clue than I do. A lot of them are running around today saying things like "We must take bold and decisive action." That's the kind of thing you say when you have no friggin' idea what to do.
Hell, I can do that. We must take bold and decisive action!
Here, I can even do better than that. I'll put it in boldface and italics and add a few more exclamation points: We must take bold and decisive action!!!!
See? Strident but meaningless. In fact, it may be less than meaningless because it sounds like I'm saying something and I'm not. A fake solution is worse than no solution because it distracts people from finding a real one. It also corrodes the language. Action cannot be "decisive" is you haven't decided what it is.
One of my big peeves in life is people who Talk Tough. Most of them don't do anything more than Talk Tough. They don't actually do anything tough and when they do feel the need to back up their talk with actual actions, they're usually more interested in appearing tough than in, say, being smart. Sending others off to die in battle is usually neither. But sounding like you're ready to do that sure sounds like bold, decisive action.