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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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If we're doing electoral politics culture war, how about the news out of Ohio?

For those not paying too much attention there's a fairly competitive race going on for Ohio governor between Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy. On Twitter yesterday Walter Curt, whose biography describes him as the State Director of the Conservative Caucus of Ohio, posted this video. The video features one Donna Arthur, Amy Acton's mother, who says the following:

My name is Donna Arthur and I'm Amy Acton's mother. I worked at the children and Family Service Association building one of the first two sexual abuse programs in America. I love my daughter but when I saw her lying about her opponent, it's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help and she can't help you if she needs help herself. People can change but first they have to tell the truth and my daughter still isn't doing that. Don't vote for people who lie. Don't let her become your governor. If you think she'll make your life better you're fooling yourself. It will only get worse.

That's a pretty powerful ad! Getting a candidate's mother to come out against them like that. Acton's campaign had their own response prepared, of course.

Today, Dr. Amy Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, released the following statement condemning Vivek Ramaswamy's attempt to platform their estranged and abusive mother:

"It's not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother's husband into a political talking point," said Philip Stearns, Dr. Acton's brother. "After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died. This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core - a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants."

Those are some pretty explosive allegations! Perhaps Acton's mother's opinions are not very reliable if Acton was removed from her custody at age 12 and Donna chose her rapist husband over her daughter. As best I can tell, the allegations are true. National Review alleges to have reviewed documents showing one Cledith Arthur was charged with having sexual contact with Acton while married to Donna. Donna has her own criminal history as well, with a conviction for theft by deception and accusations of animal abuse. Interestingly the Huffington Post dug up another 2020 interview with Donna from Operation Rescue. According to that interview:

Finally, when Amy was 12, she accused Donna’s husband, Bud of raping her. Apparently, Bud had a daughter from a previous marriage that had earlier made similar unfounded claims. It is possible that this and suggestions made by her father gave Amy the idea for making that particular accusation.

There was a grand jury investigation and Amy was called to testify. Donna had gone to court that day to support her husband. She was never personally accused or charged with any crime.

...

Donna borrowed $10,000 from her father and hired an attorney who recommended that she and Bud move away for awhile until things could calm down and charges could be dropped.

It seems to be Donna's own testimony that her husband was arrested for sexual abuse of Action and Donna and her husband skipped town while on bond to avoid any kind of trial.

Journalists naturally reached out to Ramaswamy's campaign for comment, and they said:

We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth that the public needs to be aware of before deciding who to entrust as governor.”

On the one hand, it's hard for me to see how one goes forward with the ad above knowing the full story. If the question is to be one of credibility I am not sure I trust Acton's mother, whom she has not spoken with for almost 50 years and who chose her rapist husband over Acton, above Acton herself. Especially if she has her own criminal convictions for specifically fraud-adjacent behavior.

On the other hand, how did you not know this information? As best I can tell it took the National Review and Huffington Post less than a day to get their hands on the primary legal documents detailing the dispute. The campaign's own statement references the 2020 interview, in which Donna admits the sexual abuse allegations and discusses their leaving town ahead of a trial. I guess the hope is voters see the ad but don't dig any further into the situation or context?

Oh boy, Vance is throwing his weight behind this. Guess he's trying to get a head start on losing 2028.

I guess that I'm going to have to roast JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy at some point because as someone whose background could be described as "Hillbilly Elegy, but maybe a bit worse" such that the book was an ugly trip down memory lane I wanted to like the guy and vaguely share his reactionary streak but this is taking the "sell myself for Trump" act too far and IMO in writing that book he came to a wrong "moral of the story" concerning his life.

I'm aware that Vance and Vivek are friends with shared connections but at some point one has to pull rank as VP of America, say "no, and stop this" or disavow attacking a woman who by all circumstantial/anecdotal/documented evidence appears to have suffered a worse upbringing at the hands of her mother than he or I did on those grounds. It's great that he was able to reconcile with his mother and trot her out during the '24 campaign but not everybody has that luxury and Vance of all people should know this. I am horrified by that ad on the behalf of Acton and her brother and if I lived in Ohio would vote for her without hesitation in spite of disagreeing with her Covid policies (BTW, I seriously doubt that Ramaswamy or the rest of the Ohio GOP were much better in that regard.).

I'll start by saying this: One thing I seriously doubt that Vance will ever understand is how convenient his narrative as an unconditional victim was by being the youngest sibling. I was the oldest and, well, it's not that easy.

The rest notwithstanding, I'm a bit confused at the prospect of voting for someone who will implement much worse policies on the basis that their opponent engaged in some ugly campaigning. Like yeah, presumably we used to have standards along those lines, but we're also pretty clearly past them at this point.

I think it really depends on the circumstances and what's at stake. Vivek is different from Paxton. Both in the actual distance from thier opponent, and in what 'poor character' reveals about their actual political incentives.

Vivek is an opportunist who has staked out some very anti-MAGA anti-American opinions, and he's rightly or wrongly constantly accused of untrustworthy insincerity. So character reveals can tell quite a bit about where his real focus lies. Paxton on the other hand is a crass ideologue. If you like his ideology more than Talcarino's you should vote for Paxton just about no matter what he says or does.

I think character matters in politics. So do the people of Ohio -- if nobody cared about the candidates beyond their policies nobody would have produced an ad with the words 'pathological liar' in them.

If your politicians do whatever will benefit them personally, then you can not depend on them being honest about their preferred policy either. The way I see it, character is a prerequisite. Policy differences would have to be very large to overcome this. I would probably vote for Trump over Stalin reborn running on a credible campaign of turning the US into the USSR.

The other thing is civility. While it might seem that we have rock bottom on civil behavior in the culture war, I can assure you we are still a long way off. "Yes, my candidate obviously hired hitmen to kill his opponents, but his tax policy is much more sound than theirs" is not a thing you will hear me utter.

The third thing is that even if you only care about getting results no matter the cost and the commons burned, he seems not to be very good at getting the results, because his campaign ad backfired spectacularly. There is no place in politics for Stupid Evil.

So do the people of Ohio

not, infamously, the people of virginia

That "someone" is a former appointee of the incumbent Republican Governor of Ohio.

Given that the Ohio GOP is almost certainly going to retain the legislature and the limitations of what a Governor actually does (Maybe I'm missing something and Ohio has a uniquely strong executive, but I doubt it.) I'm not convinced there's some major policy outcome at stake here. Ramaswamy can't seem to find one worth campaigning on, anyway, and there's nothing in his record to suggest to me that he's some kind of right wing dream candidate.

There's almost certainly an election with high enough stakes to make me hold my nose and vote for the scumbag I agree with, but I don't think this is one of them. I don't think that anyone would care that much about this election if not for the fact that the GOP losing in Ohio of all places is an embarrassing reflection of how they are presently viewed at the national level.

Most of the Midwest seems like it can governed fine by either a Dem or Republican. My guess is this occurs for three reasons:

  1. Dems party more strongly comes out of the working class manufacturing union Dem. Not a progressive teachers union Dem.

  2. No hedge funds or tech. These two industries are the drivers of wealth inequality and Cali/NYC level wealth inequality develops are more radical progressive left.

  3. Midwest is much less multicultural and more generic white.

Campaigns reveal character, and character affects how people govern - particularly in the US system where governors and presidents have increasingly become de facto elective kings.

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