Americans are suckers for empty gestures. Our doltish leadership is helpless to stop terrorism and the country is facing economic ruin from the corporate banditry of our neo-Robber Barons, so it’s time to distract us with one of those all-absorbing hokey crusades that we do so well. It won’t be long now before oil tankers start exploding, banks start failing, goldbugs start fleeing, and computer hackers figure out how to open the floodgates of Hoover Dam, but, as our grandstanding leaders well know, we will be too busy shouting “under God!” to notice.