Why i chose Comply and Fall

T HE NATIONAL REvIEW cruise was great, except for

the part when the ship got lost. We left Fort

Lauderdale, sailed into the yawning maw of the

North Atlantic, and couldn’t find our bearings.

Terrifying at first, but then we learned why: Someone left an

electronic device in the “on” position, and it completely

scrambled all the navigation equipment. It’s not rare—last

month the Allure of the Seas, the world’s largest and most

technologically sophisticated cruise ship, set sail for the

Bahamas but went halfway up the Mississippi River because

someone forgot to turn off a Kindle. Rumor says the captain

found the offender and beat the e-reader into pieces with a

sextant. So tired of this happening.

Well, no. I made that up. But it makes you wonder why you

have to turn off everything when an airplane takes off. No

pilot ever says, “Man, the stick was just buckin’ up and down

as we tried to climb, thanks to some dang

fool who didn’t turn off his pacemaker.” So

what’s the rationale?

Safety! If something happens during take-

off, they want your total attention. The sud-

den banging sounds, the shuddering of the

fuselage as if it were a snake attempting to

shed its skin, the screams, the acrid smoke,

the oxygen mask in front of your face—if

you’re listening to Haydn on the way up, you

might miss these subtle cues. If you’re read-

ing a Kindle, you might be so engrossed in

the story you ignore your seatmate’s punches as he attempts

to clamber over your lap. But what if I’m reading the in-flight

magazine? you say. What’s the difference? The in-flight mag-

azine is designed so you’ll constantly turn the page looking

for something more interesting than “six don’t-miss burger

joints in Spokane” and won’t be too distracted in the event

of a water landing. This is a safety feature.

It’s easier to ban everything, and we comply because we

don’t want our picture in the paper next to a story headlined

“Man Removed from Airplane over Refusal to Stop Playing

Angry Birds.” So we shut everything off, feign sleep, con-

template mortality, consider how the miracle of flight is now

commonplace, then flip open our devices the moment it’s

“safe.” O glowing rectangle, how I have missed you. All is

forgiven and forgotten.

It’s a feature of modern life: compliance with the Author -

ities because there’s no point to objecting. It’s annoying

enough when you’re led by the wise, but when you’re led by

a pack of jackanapeses and dunderheads, well, to quote Plato,

hoo boy.

Which brings us to the bureaucrats of Europe. This time

it’s the matter of the improperly advertised water. From the

bulging file of “Only in Europe! (Until It Happens Next

Year in San Francisco)” comes this story: EUcrats have

chided a bottled-water company for making a health claim

unsupported by science. Makes you taller? Smarter? Even

more egalitarian? No, the company made a claim of jaw-

dropping audacity: The water was useful in preventing

dehydration.

There was some technical explanation about absorption

rates and cellular integrity, but no one cares about the ratio-

nale, because it’s ridiculous. Find any marathon, stand at the

finish line, and offer the runners a choice between a) water,

and b) a glass of sand. Wager on which one they’ll take. You

could say, “Sure, they’ll take the water, because they’ve

been conditioned by a lifetime of ads from Big H2O,” but

most people would take water because they’re—what’s the

word?—thirsty. For water. The EUcrats’ next step will prob-

ably be a stern demand to reedit all those French Foreign

Legion movies, so the drama no longer hinges on the last

precious drops in a canteen as they stagger

across the trackless desert. While you’re

at it, edit out the cigarettes, so everyone

appears to be putting their fingers to their

lips, thoughtfully.

It’s the crisis of Western Civ in a snapshot:

On one hand, a populace so affluent they buy

fancy tricked-up water, as if they were Third

Worlders whose municipal water supply was

a chunky broth of gut-gripping microbes; on

the other hand, an overeducated, overpaid,

nomenklatura remora hanging on the body

of energetic capitalism, spending three years to study whether

water has hydrating properties— and then handing down

diktats to private enterprise to force them to change their ads.

Expand the example a thousandfold, and you have the en -

tire European experience with regulation on the molecular

level. Everyone understands that the government doesn’t

approve of the wording of a bottled-water advertisement. No

one cares. Authority without authority; acquiescence without

respect: That’s where the Western world is today. When times

are good, who cares—but after a while people note that the

teeming armies of Brussels busybodies are obsessing over

these wee teeny issues while flaming roof timbers of the post-

war economic system crash down on the marble floor. Europe

is burning, and they’re regulating water. They exist in a fan-

tasy world that’s 99.999 percent perfect; some fine-tuning is

needed here and there, and then things will be so magnifique

they can take a year off before they tackle the last issue

vexing Europe: the typeface for the regulations governing

the state subsidies for conversion of empty churches into

mosques. Some say Helvetica, some say Times New Roman.

One meeting about that issue almost came to blows.

America isn’t there yet, but we’re close. If the West

doesn’t get a sudden infusion of leadership, brash claims

by water bottlers will be the least of our concerns. As the

flight attendants might put it: Put away your toys. We have

begun our descent.

Comply and Fall

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS

Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com.

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