Thoughts in a Haystack

David Klinghoffer is whining again ... and, as usual, in a totally clueless fashion:

In a post with the exquisitely ironic title "Why Darwinists Have a Hard Time Being Civil," he compounds his insulting use of "Darwinists" with even worse incivility:

What you have to understand about these people -- I mean, those committed to Darwinism -- is that many operate in a world of academics, would-be academics, and failed academics. The last is most common of all, I'd bet. Others are, quite simply, unemployed, which poses its own challenges. ...

In university life, the pinnacle is tenure, where you are thenceforth free to be a jerk to people because you have a guaranteed job. That's the ideal! Everything leading up to it consists of a ruthless scrabble for preference. It's all terribly destructive.

I'm sure he'd complain that calling him "clueless" is uncivil but how else to describe someone who will pepper a complaint about incivility with such insulting stereotypes of an entire profession and the unfortunate victims of an economic downturn they had no control over. What goes unsaid here, but is a frequent topic of Klinghoffer's, is the supposed complicity of "Darwinists" in the Holocaust and every other evil thing that he cares to mention ... which he does, early and often.

Of course, being clueless doesn't mean he is without a certain low cunning. The whole exercise is turned into an attack on those "elitist" academics who insist that science is done better without the aid of Biblical exegesis:

So to the extent that Darwinism is the creation of an academic Guild -- and that extent is about 97 percent -- you are going to find that its defenders are challenged when it comes to being civil.

Just plain folks don't need to listen to them pointed-headed proffesser-types tellin' 'em theys related to monkeys, no siree!

And the whiny bit is this:

Their purpose is intimidation. Normal people don't enjoy dealing with rudeness, so they are understandably reluctant to enter into the comment thread discourse. Do you not find this to be true?

What he really means is that his comments section is regularly overflowing not with foul-mouthed "Darwinists" (there a some, but far fewer than you might expect given Klinghoffer's disingenuousness, of which this example is the merest tip of the iceberg) but, rather, with people who calmly and dispassionately dissect his logical shortcomings, his tendency to make his blog a veracity-free zone and his overall status as a poseur.

He'd dearly like his religious readers -- the ones not already embarrassed to have him on "their side" -- to think that, but for the mean and nasty "Darwinists," there would be hordes of "normal" citizens congratulating him on his insightful and convincing defense of Intelligent Design, instead of a plethora of people handing him his intellectual ass on a platter on what would be a depressingly regular basis for anyone who had any shame.

______________________________________

Update: The Sensuous Curmudgeon documents a litany of Klinghoffer's attacks on "Darwinists," purporting to link them with everything evil from Hitler and Stalin to the shootings at Columbine and the Holocaust Museum.

The Curmudgeon sums it up nicely: "But David wonders why 'Darwinists' don’t like him. It’s a great puzzlement."
.