There’s a newly published book on Las Vegas by a professor of urban design at the University of Pennsylvania. In this book the author explores the relationship of this desert city full of fountains and man-made monuments to chance and greed…and the cultural myths and aspirations that shape our United States today.
In a brilliant review of The Strip in the Times Literary Supplement (London) Keith Miller writes how this book “traces the rapid evolution of Las Vegas from an adobe Mormon stockade to a Wild West theme park, to Dayglo modernist utopia, to neon Babylon, to the po-faced pastiche and art galleries of the 2000s, to the ghastly good taste of present-day ‘starachitects’ such as Kohn Pederson Fox and Foster + Partners…[Vegas] isn’t some carnivalesque exception to the American story…it is the American story, simmmered down to a sleazy, exuberant quitessence.”
The recent massacre there of dozens of concert-goers by a domestic terrorist only serves to underline how typical this city is of today’s America. No public space is safe from well-armed mass killers. Vegas isn’t just about gambling, being in Vegas is a gamble in itself. The same is true of any airport, bus, meeting room, movie theatre or cafe in America. One man–it is almost always a man–can own any number of guns and any mountain of ammo he can afford…to use against any people he doesn’t like or doesn’t even know. The Vegas attacker apparently had no specific connection to any of the concert attendees or the musicians or the event…it was a target of convenience, so many targets in one place at one time.
Of course, now the paranoid right-wing nut jobs are already saying the news reports are lies, that the gunman was part of an anti-Trump conspiracy, etc. etc. This, too, is so typical of our current state in the States. The massacre also was great for the gun sales. That minority of Americans who always need more guns began buying ever more. The only limit on gun and ammo buying now in this nation is storage space.
Nevada, BTW, is an open carry state for anybody 18 or over. So there were presumably plenty of good guys with guns at the concert and in the hotel. That should lay to rest the myth that the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Sadly, in the world of firepower, size and positioning really do matter. Yet the gun lobby and sellers will continue to praise gun owners as harbingers of safety and urge even heavier arming of the population. Should we require anybody appearing outside his or her own home to carry a loaded weapon? Now that would be some homeland security, I’m tellin’ ya.
Beyond the massacre there is an even scarier story because it reveals a heartless use of the legal system to lock up and rip off elderly Americans whose only crime is getting old in Vegas. This report in the The New Yorker tells how freelance greedmeisters use legal guardianship to lock up old people and then sell off their property and then bill the estate until they have drained off the cash. Families and wills get ignored and the old people put into “homes” and drugged. You can only read it and weep and hope you die before some sleazebag decides you are worth the trouble.
And none of this deals with the overwhelming environmental catastrophe of over a million people living and bathing and watering golf courses in the southwestern desert.
Website for the book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/strip
How elderly lose their rights: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights
“TLS” review of The Strip: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/quintessence-of-lust/
Some apt Vegas quotes:
“For six bucks you got a filet mignon dinner, and me.” –Frank Sinatra
“absolute advertising city” –Jean Baudrillard
“This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality is too twisted.” –Hunter S. Thompson
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the 400-pound woman perched in front of a slot machine, oozing bum-flesh off her stool as she balanced a cocktail and cigarette in one hand and robotically tugged the slot arm with the other… that’s still with me.”
–Brian Sack
“Las Vegas is a city of kickbacks. A desert city of greased palms. A place where a $20 bill can buy approval, a $100 bill adulation and $1,000 canonization.” –Nicholas Pileggi
“Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind, class-free place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal arrest record. Money is the great leveler.” –Marc Cooper
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