AUSTIN - "Only those of a certain mental toughness find it easy to accept the plentiful evidence that history is usually a random, messy affair; that blunder, misjudgment and ignorance often play a far larger role in it than design."

I copied that quote down years ago- but failed to record the author-because it comes so close to my own sense that most of history is the product of luck, chance, accident, coincidence and, above all, human stupidity.

Reviewing both recent militia literature and the 1993 Branch Davidian disaster reminds one once again that paranoia is a national disease. In a good new novel about David Koresh by Texas writer Mary Willis Walker ("Under the Beetle's Cellar"), one of the characters, a frustrated negotiator, observes: "The problem is what we in the business call divergent world views. He sees what he's doing as bringing the world to its glorious, millennial rendezvous with God, and you see what he's doing as butchering innocent children. In divergences this extreme, normal morality doesn't apply."

Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, who bids fair to become the biggest embarrassment to this state since the days of Joe Pool and Bruce Alger-two famously knot-headed Congress members of yesteryear - has had an article published in Guns & Ammo magazine declaring that the assault on the Branch Davidians was a plot by President Clinton to gain support for gun control.

As those familiar with the case know the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms began planning the raid before Clinton was ever elected, and poor Janet Reno came into office after the disastrous stand-off had already started.

Had the conspiracy theorists been at Mount Carmel two years ago, I think that even they would have noticed that what we had there was not a plot, not a conspiracy, and God knows certainly not a plan - it was a giant screw-up that cost at least 78 people their lives. As so memorably observed in "Cool Hand Luke," "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

One thing I had forgotten until I reviewed my notes is how hard the FBI did try to communicate with Koresh. Give credit where credit is due-they brought in damn near every expert anybody knew about to try to deal with the guy. In the end, the tragedy was precipitated by precisely the same mind-set that drives those who join the militia movement: The Rambo mentality took over.

In watching the militia movement begin to make the Oklahoma bombing part of their loony conspiracy theory, I wonder how it will deal with the central accident/coincidence of the case. Timothy McVeigh was originally arrested for driving a car without license plates. And that's the way the world really works: Stuff happens on the off chance, and then more stuff happens.

The striking similarity between the militia movement and cults is in their joint desire to simplify the world: It's all a plot; it's all a design. They bend reality beyond all hope of recognition in an effort to avoid the frightening possibility that nobody is very much in charge.