I honestly don’t know how we undo the depths of the darkness of American politics today.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, would like you to know that “the Dumocrats” and the “fake news” don’t realize that Vivek Ramaswamy’s despicable ad using his opponent’s mother calling her a liar is an example of “hitting pay dirt” and is so good.
On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent every year, a priest puts ashes on the penitent’s forehead and may say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (based on Genesis 3:19).
Maybe all you care about is Election Day right now. Maybe all you care about ever is Republicans winning. Do you hate Democrats/progressives so much that any means are acceptable to you to get to that victory over them? Do you hate the left such that winning suspends morality? Do you think of Amy Acton as a human being? Do you hate her as a 12-year-old? Do you not care that she was raped as a child?
It should be a universal that the childhood sexual abuse of a candidate is off-limits for political attack.
Since this ad hit the news, people have been telling me that the ad has nothing to do with sexual abuse. No, the mother who seems to have had no relationship with her daughter for decades — since the removal when Acton was 12 (she is 60 years old now) — did not expressly mention it, as she did the tent, saying that they ever lived in a tent was false. (Court records include the tent, for what it’s worth.) But she does call her daughter a liar.
Donna Arthur says in the Ramaswamy ad:
Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past.
That seems pretty clearly all-encompassing. And the pivotal issue for which Arthur and Acton’s relationship forever changed involved the sexual abuse of the daughter. It’s safe to say the Ramaswamy campaign wants you to believe she’s lying about that thing she “complain[s] about” that “someone else did to her.”
I know the vice president of the United States thinks I’m the disgusting one, but this ad — and the onslaught of those defending it — are reprehensible.
If childhood sexual abuse is not off-limits to use to attack a candidate, I don’t know what is. Before you defend the ad, do you even know what childhood sexual abuse is? Raping a child. Do you care?
Who are we? Who do we want to be? What do we think we are doing all this for? Waking up in the morning for? Doing politics for?
Even in all-out war, folks, there have got to be limits.
Remember you are dust.
It’s bad enough when children are not protected from adult abuse — such abominable evil. But then to so cruelly and casually use it in the heat of political battle.
I honestly don’t know how we undo the depths of the darkness of American politics today.
Vote, but don’t worry. And don’t compromise yourself. And give people freedom to discern what they feel they have to do.
Focus on personal virtue. There’s great power there.
As for the politicians, pray they remember or come to know they are but creations of a Creator, and no election is actually Judgment Day, and the GOP is not God.