Do not obey in advance

A few years ago I read an astonishing and brutal work of history called Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. It is basically a history of how central Europeans, especially the Poles and Ukrainians, were savaged in the 20th century. Thanks to Russia, this horror is continuing into the 21st century.

In 2017, Snyder published a more polemical book called On Tyranny. I don’t know if Snyder wrote it in response to the rise of Trump, or if it was just a coincidence. I got my copy in the mail today, and haven’t read it yet. So this is not a review, but a reflection on lesson 1. “Do not obey in advance.”

This injunction is in the news recently because Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post back in 2013, decided this year that the Post would not offer a presidential endorsement. Bezos is doing exactly what Snyder is warning against. He is taking a risk that Trump has a good chance of winning and that in such a circumstance, Trump would use the government to hurt Bezos’s various businesses. We can call Bezos a coward (which he is), but his decision seems utterly rational. He is adjusting his business to mitigate risks.

This is on my mind because I “obeyed in advance” this summer. It was a dumb episode that required that I fool myself into thinking that something was illegal when it isn’t.

As I have bored readers this summer with my various medical issues, including open heart surgery in May, my drivers license expired, also in May. I knew I had to get a new one, and I figured that because of my age and bad eyesight, I’d have to go to the DMV, get a new eye test, and a new photo. In other words, I anticipated that the law was much more strict than it actually is. This worried me because I was prohibited from driving while recovering from heart surgery (the thinking is that if I was in an accident and my airbag inflated, my sternum would crack open). After I got eye surgery, I started the process to renew my license, and learned that my imagination had completely run away with me. I was able to renew completely on line. No new eye tests, no new photo, no standing in line at the DMV.

I am aware that my anticipatory obeying of non-existent rules falls far short of what Timothy Snyder is warning about, but what this tells me is that I won’t necessarily be one of the brave ones.

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