I guess this is the week I get the Clinton-bashing out of my system. As a severely disappointed Democrat in the afterglow of impeachment hearings and sex scandals, I have come to realize something: I don’t really like Bill much.

If the Right hadn’t spent so much time attacking him unreasonably, I would have been more than happy to do it for them.

I want to send a clear message. If the president I voted for had not been required to spend so much time defending himself from ludicrous charges, he might have spent his days defending himself from the Left that elected him.

That is the way things should be. Lefties should never be satisfied. Their strident shrieking should be tinged with pragmatism and compassionate realism, but it should still make being a Republican a misery.

While I may think Clinton has done a stand-up job when it comes to senseless right-wing criticism, as a supposed liberal, he tanks … big time. Lately, everything the dude says gives me pause.

Politics is a game for single-minded addicts looking to increase their power while pretending to give a crap about the people.

If the people weren’t a necessary element to get elected, politicians could give up the pretense of caring altogether.

In the wake of the Benjamin Smith shooting spree, President Clinton has taken time out of his “throwing a bone to the poor” tour to state that the shootings are a rebuke of “America’s ideals.” Man, that sounds nice, doesn’t it?

A white supremacist goes on a two-state shooting spree on the Fourth of July, and the president wants us to believe that his actions are somehow an ironic, misplaced commentary on American history.

The truth is, sick though it may be, a racially motivated shooting spree is just the tribute America deserves on its birthday.

It is surprising our forebears didn’t write an annual shooting spree into the Constitution. They probably figured it wouldn’t be necessary what with all the killing they were doing and that whole Second Amendment thing.

Let’s be honest, even if the president can’t be. Racial exploitation has been a hallmark of American life since before there was a United States for people to get shot in.

Since the first Indians were capped for trespassing on Manhattan Island, America has lived and thrived by exploiting and treading on people of color.

Could the railroads have been built if the Irish, Chinese and Spanish hadn’t suffered the harsh conditions of the American frontier to connect the country?

The early economic development of this country depended on slavery to keep it afloat. While the rest of the world was busy getting enlightened and abolishing slavery just from the embarrassment the institution brought them, we were dragging our feet.

To our young nation, the human suffering was acceptable considering the economic benefits.

How many Indians aren’t walking the earth today because of westward expansion? Contact was inevitable, but the manner in which it occurred was deplorable by any standard.

Genocide, biological warfare, kidnapping and brainwashing children were just a few of the acts this country was founded on.

A lot of people would like you to believe these things are shameful aspects of our past — that the world was different then, that our forebears were capable of horrific acts the way children are capable of amoral cruelty.

These arguments are simply rationalizations. Partly because what constituted moral behavior in our nation’s past is not significantly different from what it is today.

After all, this nation was guided by Judeo-Christian principles, was it not? Thou shalt not kill was on the lips and in the minds of every hayseed pioneer and toothless infantryman who ever grabbed land, raped an Indian or slaughtered a herd of buffalo for their tongues.

These rationalizations hold no water today because we never stopped exploiting people — poor folks, people of color, immigrants, foreigners. We like to think we’ve come a long way, but we haven’t.

Have clothing companies come a long way making children in desperately poor Asian countries sew for hours on end without breaks?

The Tuskegee experiments were all about seeing how syphilis would spread throughout the black community.

If this hideous experiment could actually come to light, how many other sickening biological experiments have remained hidden? Tuskegee had to be exposed.

It was a myth for years until the evidence became overwhelming enough to rate an empty apology from President Clinton. Far too little, far too late.

Japanese-Americans were rounded up and locked in internment camps for the duration of World War II though they were as American as any German descended American.

Bikini Islanders were used in fallout experiments just to see what the effects would be. Animals could have been used.

Hell, prisoners could have been used or servicemen. But in the minds of our government, a bunch of half-clothed natives smiling innocently for the cameras at the thought of the white man bringing snow was just too much to pass up.

Plentiful immigrant labor has always been used as a foil against unions. If it isn’t the Mexicans, it’s the Polish, the Czechs, the Irish or the Chinese.

The powers that be keep poor white trash thinking they are better off using minorities as scapegoats. The truth is, poor white Americans have more in common with poor black Americans than they do their supposed white brethren, but you don’t see that in the hate literature.

The truth is, Bill, Smith’s shooting spree is exactly what this country should expect. He is a nutty by-product of a hate-filled society.

Saying a shooting spree is the antithesis of what America is all about is like saying the L.A. riots were a complete surprise.

It isn’t the pleasant words that are so grating, it’s the fact that they are so distracting. A few kind words from the president, and we can all go back to waiting for the next mass murderer to take his place squarely in the limelight.

We are all so easily distracted by the most ridiculous verbal slight of hand. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to take a good hard look at ourselves. America is like the perpetually-screwed-up, emotionally disturbed kid in high school that everybody hates but won’t mess with because he’s crazy.

The problem is there’s always someone more messed up in the head than you. Enter Benjamin Smith.

Here is a guy who saw the writing on the wall. He couldn’t patiently play the game.

He wasn’t quite the “type” so he short-circuited. Had he been normal, he could have gotten a decent job in corporate America where he could practice racism with impunity while wearing a clean white shirt while his golfing buddies called him a good American.

Will the Gene Roddenberry vision of the future ever play itself out? That is a legitimate question.

It seems like a ton of geek nonsense, but the “Star Trek” vision of the future is the American vision of an ideal future.

It is the way America likes to think of itself in the future.

The reality is much closer to “Soylent Green” or “The Planet of the Apes,” but in our heads, when we imagine what good things we are capable of, we see a scientific utopia that would make Jean-Luc proud.

The truly sad thing about America is that we set such high standards for ourselves. We hold an image of ourselves that we fail miserably to achieve over and over again.

Double talk helps no one. Feigning shock and surprise at American violence should become as passe as paisley.

If America is ever to attain the next level, it needs to own its violence.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily. His effenheimer is at www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/3366.