When people think of Dickensian villains, they usually think of Fagin, Uriah Heep, Madame Defarge, Bill Sikes, Rigaud — or even Ebenezer Scrooge. But I'm going to look at a "minor" villain from Little Dorrit today, one who reminds me of modern Democrats.
As I wrote about earlier Saturday, this is the anniversary of the 1812 birth of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest writers of the English language. One of his most famous and classic novels is Little Dorrit. In writing my article earlier about unique and unforgettable Dickensian characters, I was reading passages about and watching clips of the 2008 BBC depiction of the characters Pancks and Mr. Casby.
For those who have not read the novel, Casby is a well-off landlord and property owner who manages to maintain a reputation of extreme benevolence and generosity simply because he looks, smiles, and sounds rather like Santa Claus. Dickens satirically calls him the "Patriarch." In reality, Casby is a mean, greedy, heartless man who not only wrecked his affectionate daughter’s dreams, but also insists on draining the unfortunate and often unemployed inhabitants of his properties.
Related: The Unique and Unforgettable Characters of Charles Dickens
In direct contrast is Pancks, a snorting, sharp-tongued, efficient rent collector, with an unappealing aspect, eccentric mannerisms, and the reputation of being a cruel and hard-hearted individual. He is essentially the scapegoat of Mr. Casby’s vices, for while Pancks conceals a heart of gold under his rough exterior, Casby is forever pushing his employee Pancks to squeeze the tenants of Bleeding Heart Yard dry.No one sees the private meetings where Pancks and Casby disagree over the necessity of forcing desperate families to pay yet more. They only know that they are always getting the raw end of the deal, and of course they don’t blame Casby for it, as he looks and sounds so benignant and saintly.
Now here is where I see a parallel between Casby and modern leftists. I don’t think Democrats are as successful as Casby at giving the impression of being Santa Claus, since they are frequently hysterical and continually vicious, but it is true that to their own brainwashed supporters, they manage to give the illusion of having hearts overflowing with compassion and generosity. As little as Casby’s tenants suspected him do the most fervent Democrat supporters suspect that their politicians who shed crocodile tears over foreign narco-terrorists, illegal alien parents, and Palestinian terrorists are bloodthirsty and marble-hearted.
The same Democrats who helped traffic 320,000+ illegal alien children into the country and lose them or hand them off to abusive sponsors caused a furor by bemoaning a five-year-old boy whom his illegal alien father abandoned while running from ICE. The Democrats who would not applaud the families of Jocelyn Nungaray and Laken Riley, two of the many victims of illegal alien murder, extolled domestic terrorists Renee Good and Alex Pretti as martyrs for justice. Likewise, the Democrats who take gruesome pleasure in the dismemberment of unborn babies roused violent riots over the alleged deaths of Gazan jihadis' children and the arrest of the "Maryland dad" and serial criminal Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Like Casby, Democrats' "compassion" and "virtues" are all surface level, consisting in redistributing wealth and issuing hysterical statements. And like the whitewashed tombs Christ referenced in Matthew 23, Democrats are cruel and despicable underneath.
