I know this seems afar from my usual field of dreams, so excuse me while I soapbox.

Sometimes I can barely read the paper without paroxysms of fury. Correction: I cannot read the paper without paroxysms of fury. The lies, the sorrow, the greed, and the crimes are so startling that I tremble in outrage. How can we abide this? Answer: I know why we abide this.

There on the front page of the Business section of the Sunday New York Times was the whole of it: the good and the evil, the up and the down, the victor and the vanquished. At the top of the page is the Eggleston family of Maple Heights, Ohio, the last family standing on a block of subprime foreclosures, in a sinkhole of a real estate market, in a good town going irretrievably down the tubes. They are living the life we most fear.

Three inches below is the story of a man enriched by his acumen and aggressiveness in marketing college loans. Not financial aid, mind you, but private, non-subsidized, high-interest-rate loans that regulators have now noticed bear a remarkable resemblance to subprime mortgages and the financial ravages they invoke. This fellow now lives the life we most desire: cashed out, piloting his racing yacht off the coast of Newport, R.I. He calls his yacht Numbers. I can only imagine what a shrewdly sweet upward ride those numbers have given him.

We abide this cruel dichotomy because success is our creed; more so, our religion. Just listen to the capitalist gurus co-opt the language of the church to articulate their values and their mission. Who among us hasn’t sung the refrain?

I confess: success is my religion too. Oh how I want to succeed by every conceivable measure. Oh how I want my ship to come in. Oh how I want to ride the crest of the waves. And then I see a page like the one in Sunday’s paper, inviting me to step off to the sidelines of this deadly, ceaseless, torment. I lift my arms in grief. Oh what have we become?

I’m going to say a service for the Egglestons. I’m going for broke, and the good news is, I’m almost there.