In the aftermath of the August 25, 2020 events in Kenosha, which saw a young Kyle Rittenhouse kill two and maim a third, a joke went around, mocking the prevalence of depravity on the left.  It went something like this: where can you fire three rounds into a crowd and hit a pedophile, a domestic abuser, and a gun-toting felon?  Answer?  A BLM riot.

Well, color me surprised (not), when I read the headline below:

"Non-binary queer" artist featured in Vogue for LGBT art arrested for arranging rape of a 9-year-old boy and sharing child porn[.]

He is Efrem Zelony-Mindell (ZM), and he's a darling on the left.  Time and again, high-profile media outlets and left-wing journalists have lionized ZM; he's also written for publications like the Huffington Post and Vice.  In an interview for Forbes, contributor Adam Lehrer introduced ZM like this:

As a general rule, I am opposed to applying clichéd terms like 'polymath' to the creative people that I write about. But when it comes to Efrem Zelony-Mindell, I find myself fighting the use of that particular term more than I normally would. A curator, writer, and artist, Zelony-Mindell has one of the sharpest and most unique eyes in the contemporary New York art underground, not to mention a literary and poetic point of view on aesthetics that he imbues into all of his work. ...

Zelony-Mindell has cultivated an eye for the opaque and the bewildering art and images that nonetheless bristle with meaning and contemporary dialog.

Lehrer ends his introduction with a quote from ZM:

I think people need a supportive opportunity to make up their own decisions and be affirmed in knowing that their own feelings and interpretations of things, art specifically, aren't wrong.

Affirmed — and there we have it.

Speaking in generalities, people who wind up caught in child predator stings don't one day wake up thinking, "Today I'll flip my whole life upside-down and make arrangements to rape a drugged child."  These are the accusations leveled against ZM.

Outcomes such as those listed above are common, and overwhelmingly grow out of behaviors and desires that initially don't involve children — but encouraging, or "affirming" aberrant lifestyles lays the framework for grotesque perversions of sexual relations ought to be.  It is a descent into the pits of depravity.

It is the perfect example of the snowball effect: tolerance, acceptance, and affirmation create an environment ripe for the flakes to accumulate, eventually turning into a monstrosity of a snowball, barreling toward a guaranteed end of widespread destruction.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.