Wealth & Money Quote by David Riesman

America gets cast as loud, legible, all surface: money, power, optimism, spectacle. Riesman flips that stereotype. Calling the country "mysterious" is a provocation aimed at anyone who thinks U.S. motives are transparently self-interested or clumsily advertised. His sharper move is the phrase "humorous or ironical concealment": the idea that America doesn’t just pursue interests; it wraps them in jokes, sincerity, and pop-cultural charm until they look like accidents of freedom rather than strategies of power.

As a mid-century sociologist, Riesman is writing in the shadow of American ascendance and the rise of mass media, advertising, and public relations. In that world, persuasion isn’t only argument; it’s vibe. National projects get framed as entertainment, moral uplift, consumer choice. The subtext is that U.S. power often works through disavowal: "We’re just being practical", "We’re just helping", "It’s just business", delivered with a wink that makes critique feel humorless. Irony becomes camouflage.

The comparison to the "inscrutable Chinese" is doing period work: it leans on an Orientalist cliché to underline a paradox. A country famous for openness can be strategically opaque; a culture that prides itself on plain speaking can be masterful at rhetorical misdirection. Riesman isn’t praising cunning so much as diagnosing a national talent for turning interest into innocence - and for making anyone who points at the mechanism seem like they missed the joke.