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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   24561 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?

My contempt for Ramaswamy following this debacle is normally reserved for the other side at its worst; it and the Jay Jones incident from last year are the most FUBAR I have seen our October-surprise-type politics get, and he should lose in a landslide to mitigate the damage to the social fabric. Unfortunately Jones didn't, but I don't mean to change the subject. At least Ramaswamy is polling poorly. May he poll ever worse.

It's also stupid evil, which seems like a Ramaswamy trademark. Forget the question of people looking into the full backstory; if that were a problem, ProPublica wouldn't have business. But literally now, half of the target audience is going to dismiss this as AI-generated, and the other half are Midwesterners. That's a landmine, not a golden opportunity.

I don't particularly like Acton on her own measures, but I could honestly see Vivek losing by double-digits even if the headwinds were more neutral. The annoying bit is that it's going to get drawn up as anti-Indian racism, rather than principles or just disliking the smarmy git.

The annoying bit is that it's going to get drawn up as anti-Indian racism, rather than principles or just disliking the smarmy git.

Its will only be half wrong to call it racism. In that, just about any other similarly situated Indian man has a high liklihood of having made many of the same mistakes. The Screech/Homecoming insults were not a mistake any white guy would make, but certainly is a sentiment many Indians hold. And this is another blunder down the same lines. Vivek, like many other Indians view elections as a status runoff and that being sexually assaulted lowers one's reputation, which again is a mistake no white guy in that position would have made.

Most Indians would not make the mistake Vivek made because most Indians are not strivers. Culturally Indians are not strivers. Vivek though is a striver and that comes from the selection pressure we had on Indian immigration during his parents generation. The route to the west was to be an engineer or physician so it’s more of a sub-culture of Indians we got in America. Personally, I grew up going to math tournaments but I did it in the American way of I am just having fun. So he’s basically me, but then add on a lot of education pressure where I needed to be great at academics to escape India.

True striver cultures are probably Korean and Chinese. Japan is close but I view Japanese as being more perfectionists craftsmen

Most Indians would not make the mistake Vivek made because most Indians are not strivers.

Most culturally Hindu Indians in the UK are strivers - there was nothing like the Mangla Dam (which forced a large number of low-human-capital Mirpuri Pakistanis to relocate, many of whom came to the UK) for Indians, so the immigrants are positively selected. The non-strivers are still in India.

I always assumed that the same was true in the US, particularly given the specific complaints anti-Indian Americans make.

Agree. Most American Indians are strivers but most Indians are not strivers.

Though this may be changing since H1B and other pathways became easier.

It’s one thing I found cringe about Viveks famous quote because he implied his culture was studious but his culture is not studious. It would be like visiting Harvard and touring Harvard and declaring All Americans are geniuses, but of course Harvard is representatives of the average American.

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