It seems like every week, some other weird-ass white guy with a faraway glint in his eye and more guns than sense goes on a rampage of mass slaughter. And in the aftermath, America's liberal Democrats -- understandably -- once again lead the cry for gun control.

Liberal Democrats used to concern themselves with the big issues like civil liberties, and fair play for the poor and working class. Today, in the aftermath of the Clinton/Gore juggernaut, liberalism has come to represent the authoritarian Nanny State. They're unable to reverse the complete corporate domination of the political process and the economy, the reduction of 40 percent of the population to borderline poverty status, and mass imprisonment due to the drug war. And they're clearly disinterested in preserving what is left of our civil liberties.

So today's mainstream liberals have narrowed their focus. Indeed, the bleeding hearts now expend all their do-gooder energy on issues that ultimately relate to personal behavior, and the naughty industries that help common people to self- and other-destruct. While our endless military adventures, the Pentagon budget, and the oil industry receive carte blanche from the entire political spectrum, guns and tobacco seem to be the available targets for righteous liberal rage and piety.

Meanwhile, anti-gun hero Bill Clinton has made cowboy Ronnie Reagan and CIA man George Bush look like wimps when it comes to distributing deadly firepower globally. The Clinton administration has doubled U.S. arms sales globally, while continuing our cynical policy of frequently arming both sides in regional conflicts. Perhaps a new warm and fuzzy bumper sticker -- "Foreigners are people too" -- could motivate Clinton's more liberal supporters to protest this extraordinary hypocrisy.

Of course, when we talk about Clinton now, we're really talking about Al Gore, who kicked off his "family values" campaign by flirting with the notion of banning "the wearing of gang colors." Now, I don't mind living with fashion limitations, if the prohibition of certain colors could put an end to the terrible violence in this country. But you've got to figure that we'd end up shipping those colors overseas, along with all those guns and ciggies. Before long, there would be a bunch of heavily armed, cancerous, dangerously dressed foreigners threatening our national security.

Not to worry. Our next president will probably be George W. Bush. As a compassionate conservative, he'll let us keep our guns and ciggies, lest we suffer from their lack. Meanwhile, mainstream liberals will be able to go back to the big issues like war, poverty, and the police state, because they'll be able to blame the Republicans.

R.U. Sirius ruined cyberpunk as co-publisher of MONDO 2000. In his spare time, when not wrecking conventional journalism as editor- in-chief of GettingIt, he is attempting to Fuck The Vote at www.the-revolution.org.