In a world crawling with merciless terrorists, corrupt politicians and sociopath hedge-fund managers, we need a fictional hero to save us.

Or are we so unsure of ourselves, so morally conflicted, that we can’t even win in fantasy?

Back in 1941, Captain America, a purely political creation, was charged with a single task: to kick Nazi butt. The Captain, in fact, confronted the Germans before the United States did, in one issue punching Adolf Hitler’s lights out.

One of Captain America’s creators claimed that during the late ’30s and early ’40s, “the opponents to the war were all quite well organized. We wanted to have our say, too.” And soon enough, Wonder Woman and scores of other fictional champions of the American Way employed guile and fists — unilaterally — to confront the depraved Axis powers. And Captain America went about his business without permission from Congress.

Comic book heroism wasn’t exclusively about warfare, of course. Superman, the über-superhero, was defined by another distinct notion of patriotism. Comic-book scholar Roger Sabin contends that the Great Depression and “the liberal idealism of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal” formed Superman’s left-leaning ethos. As the “savior of the helpless and oppressed,” Clark Kent’s alter-ego rarely concerned himself with international threats. Instead, he pursued shady cigar-chewing corporate magnates, devious politicians and even went toe-to-toe with the Ku Klux Klan in one famous radio broadcast. In his spare time, naturally, he was a journalist.

Later, American kids had GI Joe. There were at one point four GI Joe figures, each representing a different branch of the armed forces. GI Joe, though, wasn’t completely fictional. The Marine figure for a time actually celebrated wartime heroism. The doll was based on Mitchell Paige, a recipient of the Medal of Honor during World War II, who single-handedly stopped an entire Japanese regiment by himself.

For my generation, superheroes morphed from comic books to larger-than-life cinematic action heroes. These pugilists fought crime without being hampered by annoyances like Miranda rights or double jeopardy. John Rambo, after fighting the war at home in his first movie, assisted Afghans in taking down the entire Soviet invasion force by his third. Former karate champ Chuck Norris traveled to Vietnam to avenge the lost war and rescue prisoners left behind by a nation too weak to care.

All of it was cathartic.

Revenge and justice, in fact, could be unearthed everywhere in pop culture. When the detective duo of “Lethal Weapon 2” shot a South African diplomat — who was not only a racist, but also a drug dealer — in the head, all those who oppose apartheid could feel just a little better about the world.

This brand of moral absolutism is frowned upon these days. Our nation seems unable to serve up fictional characters without weighing them down with moral ambiguity and layers of complex emotional baggage. Our cinematic heroes are most often tortured, imperfect souls, even when they do good. We’ve become so cynical, in fact, that we can’t even imagine ourselves as unconditionally in the right. Sure, we still have Rambo, but at 60 and with a questionable grasp of his mental facilities, no one is overly confident.

Nowadays, movies are more likely to offer portents of destruction and a disturbing future. We are faced with environmental disasters in “The Day After Tomorrow.” Or “Cloverfield,” wherein a monster tears the head off the Statue of Liberty, then terrorizes a gaggle of hipsters in Manhattan. Ultra-sadistic horror and disaster flicks — a staple of another decade of unease, the ’70s — are the flavor of the day.

The only mainstream politically escapist entertainment we can find today is the television show “24,” which follows the adventures of counterterrorist agent Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland. Each season, Bauer untangles terrorist schemes jeopardizing the lives of thousands. Incredibly, in a 24-hour span — over and over again — Bauer rescues the unsuspecting public from colossal catastrophe.

Bauer, to be kind, isn’t tethered to the tenets of the Geneva Conventions or overly concerned about the FISA court. Bauer has an imaginary job to do, after all. And to extract valuable information from suspects, he tortures them. Occasionally, he tortures them emotionally, but mostly he tortures them physically. He almost always gets what he needs.

The problem is that the show’s sixth season saw ratings fall. Producers claimed they had difficulty recruiting actors, many of whom, according to The Wall Street Journal, “disapproved of the show’s depiction of torture.” Head writer Howard Gordon told the paper that, “The fear and wish-fulfillment the show represented after 9/11 ended up boomeranging against us. We were suddenly facing a blowback from current events.”

Now, I oppose torture. And by torture, I mean listening to moralizing actors who can’t differentiate between an escapist action show and reality. Playing a role on “24” is no more an endorsement of torture than playing a run-of-the-mill, misogynistic murderer is an endorsement of serial killers. At least in this sort of fiction, the public can forget we have an incompetent CIA and for 24 hours pretend that someone somewhere is actually on top of global terrorism.

In any event, “24” producers were told to “re-imagine” the show, so we can look forward to a kinder, gentler Jack Bauer.

And GI Joe? He reportedly no longer takes orders from the U.S. government. In a movie due out next year, Joe is commanded by a “European-based military unit known as Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity (GIJOE).” Perhaps he’ll track down global warming deniers and copyright infringers.

Last we heard from the real Captain America, he was protesting a new federally mandated law requiring all “super-powered” individuals to register with the government. Such laws, he believed, were an assault on civil rights of the “superhero community.” He was killed by an assassin’s bullet soon after. I kid you not.

Some say that popular culture is typically a reflection of our national psyche.

If that’s true, we’re a nation completely unsure of itself.

David Harsanyi (dharsanyi@denverpost.com) is a Denver Post columnist and member of the editorial board.