But I had forgotten about the seven bowls of God's wrath stored in the minds of some of the unhappier prophets on the reactionary right,... - Lewis H. Lapham

Money ennobles rich people, and corrupts poor people. Money in sufficient quantity entitles its possessor to the reverence and respect owed to the statue of George Washington. Money is the sacred elephant, always in the room, never to be addressed or seen, but whose will is done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Seeking the invisible through the imagery of the visible, the Americans never can get quite all the way to the end of the American dream.

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.