Methinks the man doth protest too much.
This twist on a Shakespeare line could come to mind while pondering the story of one Darrin Bell, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. Bell is famous for, among other things, drawing anti-Trump cartoons in which he portrays the president as a vile sex offender. He also often characterizes conservatives generally as, writes a critic, “sexual predators or people who are weirdly obsessed with child sexuality.” Given this, the following may seem poetic.
Bell was arrested last Wednesday on charges of possessing 134 child pornography videos, as well as AI-generated child porn.
Wow, who saw that coming?
(That is, except for anyone mildly acquainted with a certain ideological group’s projection tendencies.)
What’s more, if guilty, Bell will just be the latest among a multitude of leftists found complicit in sexual misconduct.
Newsweek reports on the story:
Darrin Lawrence Bell, 49, allegedly had over 130 videos of sexual abuse connected to an online account, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.
Bell [pictured below] is a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist who “took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration,” according to the Pulitzer website.
Charles Schulz He Ain’t
Though much ballyhooed, Bell is reminiscent of failed liberal radio network Air America, being more adept at flaying than funniness. The following samples of his work, courtesy of commentator Andrea Widburg, make this clear.
Message: Bell objects to opposing children’s sexualization, as epitomized by Drag Queen Story Hour and other sexual devolutionary efforts. Telling?
Then there’s the following video. Apparently, this is what wins you a Pulitzer today.
And in the same vein, there’s this:
Then there are these classy creations:
Ironically, the above is closer to what Joe Biden habitually does. That is, his inappropriate touching of young girls and sniffing of their hair.
Moving on, there’s this inspired work, too:
Yes, well, 17 must be seasoned-veteran status among leftists, as some of them advocate lowering the age of consent to 14.
Of course, we don’t know what Bell’s age-of-consent desire is. For those interested in the known details surrounding his arrest, however, a law enforcement press release follows.
Creature of the Left
In fairness, Bell hasn’t yet been found guilty. And whether or not he’s a pedophile, the aforementioned Widburg emphasizes, is “something evidence and a jury will determine.” But “there’s one thing we know for certain,” she adds: “He’s not a nice man.”
This said, internet commenters were quick to mention what appears to them an association. As X user “DannyGloves” quipped, “Not all Dem voters are ped@s, but all ped@s are Dem voters.”
Echoing this, fellow respondent “Squiffy” wrote, “I’m beginning to wonder if there are any leftists who aren’t p€dophiles.”
And X poster Scott Karren noted, “Dems[’] projection proves true like clockwork.”
But isn’t this just partisan prejudice? Could there really be a link between party affiliation — or, more significantly, ideological bent — and being sexually twisted?
Ideology of Vice?
The evidence certainly may suggest this. Many Democrats do, in fact, descend from the authors of the Sexual Devolution and are themselves boosters of it today. This, along with their generally loose “morals,” helps explain why perhaps 90 percent of those implicated in sexual misconduct via the #MeToo movement were left-wingers.
It also may explain a certain, very telling 2013 article. “Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia,” its title read. “Pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life,” the subhead added. “Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.”
If that’s not enough, the piece also quoted, favorably, someone saying that an individual’s pedophilia is “as intrinsic as the next person’s heterosexuality.” And where was this published? Was it National Review?
The American Conservative?
Daily Caller?
The New Criterion?
It was actually the left-wing (then very left-wing) Los Angeles Times. And as I illustrated in “The Slippery Slope to Pedophilia,” the paper is not an anomaly. There is an effort to normalize pedophilia — and it is a left-wing endeavor.
That leftists may be worse people certainly wouldn’t surprise author Peter Schweizer. After all, he wrote the 2008 piece, “Don’t listen to the liberals — Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.” Schweizer’s explanation for this phenomenon is that “your politics influence[s] the manner in which you live your life.” In reality, though, this is the mistaking of correlation for causation.
The Root Cause
It’s said that “politics is downstream from culture.” Less well understood is that a person’s politics is downstream from his own personal culture. This itself is downstream from his spiritual, moral, and philosophical foundation.
So it’s not that your politics influences how you live your life so much (though everything can have an effect). It’s that the aforementioned deeper realm influences your politics and how you live your life.
Regarding this, ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote about how people come to be what they are. Emphasizing early years’ socialization’s significance, he said that a child should be raised in an atmosphere of nobility and grace. This will engender in the little one an emotional attachment to virtue. This is the only kind a small child can develop because he’s still too young to appreciate virtue intellectually. Once this attachment is reality, though, the youth will have a more correctly formed emotional foundation. And then, once he reaches the age of reason, he’ll be more amenable to accepting the dictates of reason because his feelings won’t be contrary to them.
Unfortunately, however, it’s easier still to develop in a child an emotional attachment to vice. (After all, things left to themselves naturally move toward disorder.) Today’s popular culture itself works toward this end. And once this attachment exists, upon reaching the age of reason the individual will be quite unreasonable.
Generally speaking, it is this kind of person, with a soul darkened by sin, who gravitates toward ideologies equally dark. For example, Marxism in 1917 Russia and Nazism in 1933 Germany — and what we call “leftism” today.
In a nutshell, people with sinful attachments will embrace world views that help justify them. In every time and place, too, there are ideologues eager to deliver this pseudo-absolution for votes and power.
