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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Outed as an Actual Rapist.

"Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

'I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. 'I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’'"

Platner officially denies the allegations, but you can tell from his statement that deep down he knows it's true. He can't admit to it because he would go to actual jail, but everyone knows his campaign is over.

The haters said he would crash and burn, and they were correct. Honestly great call by the haters.

The Maine Democratic Party has one week until the ballot deadline to pick a candidate while stepping on as few toes as possible. Let the games begin.

I haven't followed this story closely enough to assess the facts or Platner as a person.

But I worry that a system of "Your ex-lover says bad things about you and now you are toxic waste" is basically a system that bans normal people from running for office.

The vast majority of exes have bad things to say about their former partners. Crazy, bipolar, abusive, violent, lying, cheating, scumbags all of them.

And the only way to be sure you never have a crazy ex is to never date. Crazy ex girlfriends might seem sane when you meet them, or they might be sane when you meet them and suffer a mental break later*.

Per a quick Grok, 90-95% of ever-married Americans have premarital sex. The median partner count is about six for a 42 year old man. That's six rolls of the dice, and if you roll under 5 on a d20 you can't ever run for office. And you can't really know how you rolled until you've already staked your whole life and fortune and reputation on the run.

That's not really any way for a country to function. Normal people have to be able to run for office. Otherwise our only politicians will be freaks, people who have lived their whole lives in a kind of asceticism designed to protect their future political careers.

Sex and romance are a full contact sport, and we want to issue lifetime bans to anyone who commits a foul.

*Growing up my father got letters from a woman he dated some time in the 70s before meeting my mother. She went through a mental health crisis after moving to a foreign country and marrying a man there, and sent FiveHour the elder hundreds of letters making up dozens of stories to...idk maybe get him back or something? She actually died at one point, at which time her "sister" started sending the letters, then she came back and sent the letters herself again. I suppose this experience informs my views.

I wouldn’t say that the rape(y) allegation was what did Platner in. It was a final straw on top of everything else. I’m okay if normies are brought down by a combination of being communism-curious, training antifa goons on how to use firearms, lying about nazi tattoos, getting nazi tattoos in the first place, sexting numerous women within his first year of marriage, hanging out on apps known for underage hookups, pretending to be working class, pretending to be oyster farmers, lying about why he went to a prep school, etc etc.

Just avoid doing, you know, some or all of the above and a lying crazy ex probably won’t be enough to derail your campaign. Swalwell got elected a few times and almost got the governor’s chair, after all.

Real weight bearing "almost" in that last sentence.

People voted for Platner despite/because of all of the above, and now he's being driven out by unresolvable accusations from his ex gf. That looks less like "straw that broke the camel's back" and more like "trap card activated."