Gemini tells me that Albert Einstein “revolutionized physics by proving that time is not absolute, universal, or flowing at the same speed for everyone”. I will accept that, having no idea what he is talking about. But let’s take the year 1978, for example.

In 1978, Amy Acton, Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, was 12 years old. Her parents were divorced, and her mother had remarried a man named Cledith Arthur.

Digression: Cledith is a strange first name, to be sure. According to my smart phone, today there are “about” 81 Americans with the first name Cledith. The majority of them are female. Their average age is 83. This is important to know. End of digression.

Cledith Arthur was accused of abusing Amy Acton over a period of two years, starting when she was about 10. In 1978, Cledith Arthur was indicted and faced criminal charges. He was not imprisoned after the indictment was handed down and, rather than face the charges, he absconded and wound up somewhere in Pennsylvania. He remained a fugitive until he died in 2004. (Perhaps sadly, I assume there is a movie about this that has not yet been made.)

Amy Acton’s mother, Donna, ran away with her husband Cledith, leaving her children behind. She had had custody of Amy and her brother, but in 1978, Amy’s biological father, Gerald Stearns, obtained custody of his children and they remained with him from then on. Amy has not been with her mother since 1978, presumably most of the time not knowing where she was.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign team reached out to Donna Arthur and created the now infamous one minute commercial in which Arthur claimed that her daughter was just a plain, old Trump-like (she did not use that term) liar. Why did she make that video? Why would she care, living somewhere in Pennsylvania, that Amy Acton might become governor of Ohio? In other words, does anyone doubt that Ramaswamy’s smarmy campaign paid her for her allegiance? I haven’t seen anything about this (in fact, I haven’t seen that any member of the fake media has been in touch with Arthur, or has unsuccessfully tried to be in touch with Arthur), but I can’t imagine that it isn’t true, can you?

Donna Arthur is clearly a woman with problems. I have read that she has been arrested at least three times, writing bad checks, cruelty to animals and more. At least one of these times she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time in prison. This also has not yet been fully reported. At least, I don’t think it has. (As I said, wait for the movie.)

Another question is whether, in the video, Arthur is lying. There are three possibilities. One, she is telling the truth. Two, she is not telling the truth, but thinks she is. Three, she is lying. If Arthur is outright lying, it would probably be because she is being paid a good portion of the $4,000,000 that Vivek’s smarmy campaign says it is paying to promote the video. And this is a possibility, of course. A reasonable one.

But it is also possible that Donna Arthur thinks that Cledith got a bum rap, and that he really never did abuse his step-daughter. And that Gerald (along with lying Amy) made all of that up to get his children back and punish her and her innocent husband. After all, there does not seem to be any evidence that she participated in, or abetted, the abuse, and maybe the accusations took her by surprise and she just didn’t believe they were true. She would then have been in a terrible position – the courts, she might conclude, would believe her 12 year old “lying” daughter and the s.o.b. that was her first husband, and Cledith would spend the rest of his life in jail, and she the rest of her life alone.

If that is what she believed, no wonder she chose her innocent husband over her inveterate liar of a daughter(with whom I bet she did not get along with very well anyway) and, because her husband had no choice but to escape and go underground, she had to follow him. And, over the next 25 years, this belief became stronger and stronger as Cledith always maintained that he was framed, and she believed him. (I can picture the movie more and more clearly.) And of course, over the 22 years since Cledith died, there would be no reason for her to change her mind, only reason for her to grow more and more bitter.

Amy Acton is no longer 12 years old; she is now 60. I certainly have no reason to believe that she made up what happened almost 50 years ago, but actual proof would probably be hard to come up with now. So, in effect, it is really “she said, she said” at this point. And since there is no record of Amy Acton being an inveterate liar after she moved in with her biological family, and Donna Arthur’s background and history seems so sketchy at best, it is doubtful that many (any) pro-Acton Ohio voters are going to change their mind based on this video. And more likely that Vivek is going to lose some supporters over his decision to produce, show, and double down on it.

Okay, back to time.

1978:

1. The Shah was in charge of Iran
2. Jimmy Carter was president of the United States
3. The U.S. transferred the Panama Canal to Panama
4. Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco
5. The Camp David Accords were signed by Sadat and Begin
6. Home Depot and Ben and Jerry’s were started
7. Christopher Reeves first played Superman
8. The Jonestown Massacre occured in Guyana
9. Saturday Night Fever and Grease were hits
10. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was born
11. The Blues Brothers and Bob Marley were big
12. Muhammad Ali won the heavy-weight boxing title
13. Cledith Arthur was accused of sexual assault, and disappeared
14. Amy Stearns (Acton) saw her mother for the last time.
15. Albert Einstein had been dead 23 years.

1978 was a long time ago. Even for those of us who think of it as yesterday.