The theory of unintelligent design

Does anyone else get tired of the endless bleatings about the world coming to an end? You know, all the weeping and hand-wringing from the ones who think a wedding ring on a gay finger means the destruction of civilization, who inhabit a looking-glass planet where Blacks oppress whites and women oppress men, who groove to the mortician vibe of Stephen Harper, and get offended by spirited cartoons on rabble.ca and Dr. Morgentaler's second doctorate.

Here's a newsflash: if the world ends, it will be because of global warming and one-too-many American wars and the increasing gap between rich and poor that is the chief hallmark of globalization. It will be because humanity as a whole is not intelligently designed, has evolved to be more tactical than strategic, more impulsive than reflective, and has sinuses that drain upwards.

Ever wonder why the Right has what Burgundy-lovers call "immediate appeal," while the Left must struggle daily to evoke human empathy and solidarity in people--including themselves? It's unintelligent design, nothing deeper than that. What...you want proof?

• A very foolish diplomat named Mr. Franco Pillarella was unaware, so he claims, that Syria practises torture. He is now Ambassador to Romania.
  
• MRI machines stand idle while waiting lists grow. Why? Because, according to a report by Dr. Anne Keller, asked to look at the situation in Ontario, there "is not optimal business management."
• A young woman in California faces ten years in prison for watering some marijuana plants.
  

This is from ONE page of today's Ottawa Citizen. I'm almost afraid to move on to page two, but a kind of heart-breaking surrealist poem is taking shape. Later for that.

One final question: what is it with the "bodacious babes of backlash," as Michele Landsberg used to call them? Must they all be anorexic damaged goods? There's Rachel Marsden, has a gig in the National Post now, which figures--she seems to have outgrown swimming coaches and now finds herself afloat in a brackish sea of well-worn cliches, scooping cupfuls out for the somnambulists who must receive their daily sedative but think they're above the Sun. There's the ridiculous Ann Coulter and her pack of lies. And right here in blogland there's our own Kathy Shaidle, with her mixture of pith Christ and vinegar, mixing it up with the folks over at rabble.ca--sort of--and posting fitful bursts of self-hype between installments of a boring anti-Islam crusade.

In case anyone thinks I'm being sexist (heaven forbid, I'm a well-processed SNAG and I know the secret handshake), let me devote a moment to David Horowitz, FrontPage Magazine editor and writer. You know the guy actually answers e-mails? I'd been moved to send him one, based on some racist comment or other I found in his e-zine, and suddenly there he was, asking what my politics were. There is no simple answer to that question, and we exchanged a few messages. I swear I gave up nothing, but now I get regular requests for money from "the desk of David Horowitz", and I'm allegedly a supporter.

What surprises me is that his style hasn't changed a bit from the good old days when he edited Ramparts. He still loves the biting polemic and the thrill of the chase. But there's something a little superficial and even dishonest about him these days.

Horowitz is no dummy, even if some of his contributors assuredly are. But even when we're smart, we seem to be programmed to behave in stupid ways and say stupid things. The man is far too bright to believe, for example, that "the Left" really endorses the tenets of radical, homophobic, misogynist, fanatical, mediaeval Islamic extremism as evinced by bin Laden et al. But there he is, pushing the latest demonizing craze with tremendous gusto. Reminds me of the time, way back in the mid-sixties, when a baseball player or coach or something said that anyone who throws a beanball is a "Communist."

Talk about unintelligent design.