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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   1764 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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Hot off the Platner scandal, here comes Max Miller one upping him. Max Miller, a Republican who previously served in Trump's first admin and running for reelection as state representative has been accused by his ex-wife of throwing hot water on her, putting a gun to her head, and (potentially) even choking their 2 year old daughter.

She doesn't know for sure as it would have happened behind closed doors, and Miller obviously denies this but CPS investigations did suggest strangulation as possible.

Neither the child’s father, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), nor mother, conservative policy adviser Emily Moreno, admitted to knowing what caused their daughter’s injury or that it occurred while their daughter was under their care. Miller’s primary theory was that the bruising resembled marks from a seat belt. Moreno, who discovered the bruises and took the child to an emergency room, suggested the cause may have been something more sinister. Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn’t rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture. Moreover, a child protection specialist reviewing the incident had characterized the bruising near the fracture as resembling a “handprint.”

And the daughter for some reason seems to be scared of her father, so even if he didn't cause this particular injury it's not a great sign.

“Daddy’s house is scary,” Moreno recounted her daughter saying, according to a Bay Village, Ohio, investigative report relating to the February 2026 injury.

There's also apparently been other accusations against him when he was younger.

Responding to written questions from Moreno’s lawyer about whether Miller threw a girl down the stairs in high school, faced expulsion from college for a violent incident involving a female student, and left Moreno within three days of their child’s birth, Miller—over the course of the domestic proceedings—neither confirmed nor denied the events took place.

Especially when I made an interesting discovery, him being an abuser seems to have been already known or at least suspected in politics. George Santos had previously called him a woman beater during a spat with Miller, because Miller was accused of assaulting his previous girlfriend before that.

Miller, a former Trump White House aide, was accused of slapping his then-girlfriend and Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham in 2020, which she said resulted in her ending the relationship.

and

Politico was more specific in its July 2021 article, recounting—according to three people familiar with the incident—that Miller “pushed [Grisham] against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her.”

And Miller is (or was) a drug user, showing a history of irresponsible behavior.

Records from Miami University police concluded that Miller’s blood alcohol content was under the legal limit, and he pleaded down to a misdemeanor for failing to control the car. “A blood test conclusively established that Mr. Miller was not impaired,” Miller’s attorney told Politico at the time.

However, Mother Jones has obtained further toxicology reports from the incident stating that Miller had MDMA—also known as ecstasy—and Klonopin in his system at the time of the crash.

And there is hard proof that he poured hot water on Moreno, per a recording.

According to the transcript, Moreno is heard saying, “You poured steaming hot water on me, and you’ve also, you, uh, you have been insanely emotionally abusive.”

Miller first said he “didn’t pour hot water on [her] neck.” He then said, “The water incident…I never thought that that hurt you.”

“It was never done to hurt you with intent. It never was done to hurt you, and you know that,” Miller explained.

Again there's no hard proof of most of these (yet at least) but a history of physical abuse allegations throughout his life + drug usage (and lying about it) + the abuse suggesting bruising patterns on his own child + at least one proven allegation, it certainly seems to be leaning towards his guilt.

These allegations haven't reached the general public much yet, but they do seem to having a small effect on his reelection chances already. Not as much as Platner did but the news is still pretty young. Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays by their respective sides and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.

Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.

This is a fantasy of the kind some liberals like to tell themselves. Politics is a team sport and it doesn't bother me that sometimes the people "on my team" are "bad people". Sometimes they're real scumbags. But I'm not attached to the idea that my politicians all have to be good people. They might represent me politically, but they don't "represent me".

A lot of liberals seem to live in this moral universe where they do need to think of their politicians as The Good Guys. It's seemingly very important to them. I still hear repetitions of Michelle Obama's line that "when they go low we go high," as though liberals are too noble and pure to stoop to the evil politicking the right so distastefully abuses. It's as if they feel that they actually are "represented" by their politicians, parasocially. It's a personal affront.

In reality I don't see any evidence that Democratic politicians are more moral than Republican politicians. Why would it be the case?

(I know some will say that conservatives have the same problem and that it's unfair of me to describe this as a liberal issue. I will add that I think the conservative equivalent of this is tendency to relish in perceived "cruelty" -- conservatives having already accepted that their ideas are considered immoral by polite liberal society, so they choose to double-down.)

In reality I don't see any evidence that Democratic politicians are more moral than Republican politicians. Why would it be the case?

One obvious reason it might be the case that one party's politicians are more moral than the other's is if one party's platform is itself genuinely morally superior to the other. If any decent person feels in their heart that e.g. abortion is a human right, then by definition only evil or, at best, amoral people will become conservative candidates. (A conservative could, of course, make the symmetrical argument: only a morally-degenerate person would support cancellation campaigns or gay rights, therefore no righteous person is ever going to touch the DNC with a ten-foot pole.)

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