If you haven’t read Kay’s excellent post about the anti-Acton ad featuring her mother, read that first. She knows a lot more about Ohio politics than I do, but I wanted to make a general comment about the reasons behind that ad.

I’ve been reading a lot of the commentary around Ramaswamy’s ad that uses Amy Acton’s horrible mother, who sided with her (indicted) rapist husband (Amy’s stepfather) against Acton. There seems to be universal agreement among liberal commentators that this is the death knell of Ramaswamy’s campaign. I hope so. But I want to understand why Ramaswamy’s campaign (and Trump) are doubling down on the ad — they think it will motivate their base. I think it comes down to the view of children as property.

Let’s start with the rape of a twelve-year-old. It’s awful, no good, and terrible, like many things in life. I wonder how many of the MAGA faithful have experienced this, and how many have covered it up. I wonder this because of the focus on pedophilia that pervades MAGA. I grew up in a small town and I surely didn’t experience it as a kid, and didn’t have firsthand knowledge of any of my friends or acquaintances who did. Later in my life, looking back at some of the kids who I knew at school, I have my suspicions. My wife has almost 100 first cousins, and I don’t know that any of them were abused. Still, if you talk to any mental health professional, one of the common experiences of their patients is sexual abuse. So, it happens.

It’s pure speculation on my part, but I think that MAGA’s beliefs about child abusing Democrats who run abuse rings out of the basement of pizza restaurants have to grab hold in part because the experience or knowledge of child abuse is something that’s part of their lives. I honestly wonder if others think this is true.

Moving on to the aspects of children as property that doesn’t involve raping them, there are a hell of a lot of MAGA folks who are estranged from their children. The obvious forms of estrangement is from kids who have been abused, but there are a lot of other reasons that kids can be estranged, and a lot of different forms of estrangement.

Let’s start with kids who are gay or trans. It’s a common (and smart) strategy for LGBTQ kids whose parents won’t accept them to cut off contact with their parents. And straight kids who have children of their own don’t want their anti-vax parents coming in contact with their kids and giving them COVID or the flu.

Even kids who don’t have major conflict with their parents living in rural towns are going to move far away, or to the blue dot in their state, to get a decent job. Most of the kids who graduated from high school in my hometown live hundreds or thousands of miles away. This is another kind of estrangement, one I think that Fox News and other right wing media amplifies by portraying cities as urban hellholes full of deviancy. The reality is that the kids probably live in some suburb that is as safe as their rural hometown, and Fox is spreading copium to their parents. The parents know they’ll be facing the grim reaper alone. It’s sad, but Democrats and liberals didn’t do that to them. Fox and right wingers are, as usual, giving these folks a scapegoat for their pain and anguish.

Amy Acton is estranged from her mom for legitimate reasons. But the MAGA parents who are estranged from their children don’t think that any reason for estrangement is legitimate. So, an ad with an old and ill-looking woman saying that her kid is lying about her speaks to them, since they think the complaints of their child-property are illegitimate. Their kids should be home taking care of them. They aren’t, and that pain needs go somewhere. I hope it isn’t a vote for Ramaswamy, but I wouldn’t bet on it.