Lift Up Your Hearts!

Here's a question I'd like to ask of political pollsters:

What is the ideal position for a political candidate in the polls, at various times before an election?

Clearly, to be leading in the polls on Election Day (or whatever passes for Election Day in these days of early voting and mail-in ballots) is a good thing. But what about earlier? To be doing well at any point feels great, and can boost support due to the "to him who has, more will be given" effect. People like to be on the winning team, and tend to flee people they feel can't win.

I think there's more to it than that. The following excerpt is from Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy; it has haunted me since I first read it in elementary school. (emphasis mine)

Weemsby stood up and looked happy. "In my own person, I vote one share. By proxies delivered to me and now with the Secretary I vote—" Thorby did not listen; he was looking for his hat.

"The tally being complete, I declare—" the Secretary began.

"No!"

Leda was on her feet. "I'm here myself. This is my first meeting and I'm going to vote!"

Her stepfather said hastily, "That's all right, Leda—mustn't interrupt." He turned to the Secretary. "It doesn't affect the result."

"But it does! I cast one thousand eight hundred and eighty votes for Thor, Rudbek of Rudbek!"

Weemsby stared. "Leda Weemsby!"

She retorted crisply, "My legal name is Leda Rudbek."

Bruder was shouting, "Illegal! The vote has been recorded. It's too—"

"Oh, nonsense!" shouted Leda. "I'm here and I'm voting. Anyhow, I cancelled that proxy—I registered it in the post office in this very building and saw it delivered and signed for at the 'principal offices of this corporation'—that's the right phrase, isn't it, Judge?—ten minutes before the meeting was called to order. If you don't believe me, send down for it. But what of it?—I'm here. Touch me." Then she turned and smiled at Thorby.

Thorby tried to smile back, and whispered savagely to Garsch, "Why did you keep this a secret?"

"And let 'Honest John' find out that he had to beg, borrow, or buy some more votes? He might have won. She kept him happy, just as I told her to."

A really commanding lead can discourage competitors from pouring money and effort into a losing cause. But somewhere in between that kind of lead and the bottom of the heap there's a point—I'm going to call it the Garsch Point—where a lead is dangerous. Two terrible things can come into play:

• A candidate's own supporters can become complacent, let down their guard, and like the overconfident hare, risk losing to the lagging but persistent tortoise.
• A zealous opponent, who would rather win honestly, may be tempted to resort to nefarious means of helping himself to victory. After all, when you're fighting infidels, it's okay to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill, right? Well, no, it's not. But the temptation can be great if you think the contest is critical and you might get away with it.

Beware the Garsch Point. It's okay to be happy to be leading in the polls, but it ought to be less a time for celebrating than a time for doubling down on honest and honorable effort. And maybe for not letting your enemy know your full strength.

I've written here several times about Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-educated mathematician/musician/comedian whose That Was the Year That Was was one of my favorite childhood albums.  (Another was Music, a Part of Me, a collection of oboe works by David McCallum—yes, that David McCallum—but that's another story.)

Although I've frequently replayed some of my favorite Lehrer songs, such as Pollution and New Math and The Elements, this particular song is one I probably haven't heard since I was in my teens.  Nonetheless, I could still sing much of it from memory, even though it wasn't until now that I finally understood the line about Schubert and his lieder!

Whatever Became of Hubert? needs no commentary, although it's enhanced if you know a little about the Lyndon Johnson years.

Every important question is complex.

I'm as appalled as anyone at the irreversible mutilation being done to children by their parents and their doctors, under the guise of "gender-affirming care"—a term that's as bizarre an example of doublespeak as George Orwell ever dreamt of. Parents and doctors, abetted by teachers! Three of the strongest forces in life charged with keeping children safe! Surely this inversion of reality is one of the greatest horrors of our day.

And yet. And yet. It doesn't take much thinking to realize that societies, over all time and all places, have had a very inconsistent view of what, actually, is considered mutilation.

As a child, I remember seeing pictures (probably in the National Geographic magazine) of African women with huge wooden disks in their lips or ears, their bodies having been stretched since childhood by inserting disks of gradually increasing size. I called it mutilation; they called it fashion.

Not that many years ago, the Western world was horrified by the practice in many cultures of female circumcision, dubbing it "female genital mutilation," and putting strong negative pressure on countries where it was common. As recently as 2016 we saw billboards in the Gambia attacking the practice, and I was in agreement. But who was I—who is any outsider—to burden another culture with the norms of my own? Cultures can and sometimes should change, but from within, not imposed by outsiders.

What about male circumcision? That has been practiced for many millennia, in divergent cultures, and is far less drastic than the female version. If we'd had sons, I don't think we would have had them circumcized, there being no religious reason to do so—but when I was a child, it was the norm for most boys in America, regardless of religious affiliation. By the time my own children came along, there was a strong and vocal movement to eliminate male circumcision. Where are those folks now, when we are routinely removing a lot more than foreskins?

Okay, how about piercings? Tattoos? Frankly, I call both of them mutilation. Obviously, a large number of people disagree with me.

Some cultures in the past had no problem with "exposing" unwanted babies, leaving them to die—unless some kindly, childless couple found them and raised them as their own, thus creating the foundation for centuries of future folk tales and novels. We in America can hardly cast stones at those societies, given how few of our own unwanted babies live long enough to have a chance to be rescued.

Where do you draw the line? Maybe between what adults do of their own free will, and what adults do to children who are not yet capable of making informed decisions? Yet there are parents who have the ears of their babies pierced, or disks put into their lips, or parts of their genitals removed, and the societies they live in have no problem with that.

Where do you draw the line? I agree it's a complex and difficult issue.

All I know is that if America has become a place where parents, doctors, and teachers—those we trust most to do no harm to children—are facilitating the removal of young children's genitals, flooding their bodies with dangerous drugs, and encouraging them to believe that this is the best course of action for their mental health, then we haven't just crossed a line—we've fallen off a cliff.