Why Is Las Vegas There?

U.S. Senator Harry Reid, who is gearing up for re-election, got a few hackles up the other day. He told the advertising manager of one of the Las Vegas newspapers that he hoped that paper would go out of business.

This suggests that that paper has not been kind to him. But that's not the only thing that suggests that the paper might very well be rightist. The big tipoff was the standard self-righteous bleat that is one of the main conservative, rightist devices these days -- the demand for an apology, and stated in such a way that there can be no doubt at all about the error of the transgressor's ways. And most likely, hopelessly crippled as he is by his profession and by his position as the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, Reid has already given that apology.

Too bad.

In a sane world he would not have bothered. In fact, in a sane world he would have gone farther and would have said, "Not only that but I also hope that Las Vegas itself goes out of business -- or at least see the errors of its hideously profligate ways. Then our great state of Nevada wouldn't be such a drag on the rest of the country."

Why is that city there? What is the purpose of Las Vegas?

The answer is staggeringly simple. It's there so that people with nothing better to do can gamble, booze, and whoremonger in comfort. Period.

But of course you will never find that true statement emblazoned anywhere in its City Hall or on the many mechanisms by which the habituees of that city advertise the place. It is, like all evils, just understood.

In the centuries to come, when historians try to figure out where the U.S. went wrong, among the many great jumping-off points they will have at their disposal, Las Vegas will be right there near the top -- a giant extravagance, a loud, gaudy, enormous parasite feeding off the rest of the country in the process of pulling huge quantities of valuable resources its wasteful way, especially water, to drain off into the desert sands to no good end.

This article in Common Dreams tells the story, about the water.