It is convenient to live in a culture because culture absorbs ideas, attitudes, prejudices, and behaviors and tucks them away in an always-there backdrop, a backdrop that makes most risks ordinary, precluding the need to confront head-on each morning the multiple uncertainties of reality.  Thus culture defangs risk, and we head off in cars without worrying that nearly 1,000 die each day in crashes, without fretting that we will become one of the equal number of daily US gun deaths.  But American culture has not yet taken in terrorism, so despite the tiny real risk of dying in a terrorist attack, we worry.  Until culture catches up and positions terrorism alongside airline travel, light-ignoring street crossing, and sex with strangers, cynical leaders will be empowered to provoke maximum response to minimal danger.