“In San Francisco I caught a fleeting glimpse of the type of man who overthrew the cult of the serpent and overcame the fear of lightning—the descendant of the indigenous race and of the gold-diggers who expelled the Indians: Uncle Sam in his tall hat walking proudly along the street past a pseudo-classical rotunda. And always above his top hat runs the electric wire. In this copper-snake, invented by Edison, he has wrested the lightning from nature.”—Aby Warburg, “A Lecture on Serpent Ritual,” 1923
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