After exhausting themselves through Strip shenanigans, many visitors swear they could never live in Las Vegas. They imagine the rest of the city, if it possible for them to grasp precincts beyond the neon, noise, and lures, just as draining.
Worse yet, a good number of these mildest of mild hedonists also must compare the narrow band of Las Vegas Boulevard to the enormity of New York City. Sigh! Never fails. This always from revelers who desire someday but have yet to set foot in civilization.
Here’s the comparison needed to set such easily-guiled, hungover daydreamers straight: Las Vegas is an occasional diversion; New York City is constantly magnificent.
Anyway, living in Las Vegas is easy. Astonishing as this might seem, away from the minor bedlam bisecting the city, it’s quite livable.
Cheap, too!
Quiet residential neighborhoods, parks, libraries, and every other amenity sought for decent living are at hand. And nary a showgirl nor roulette wheel in sight. See it as a bigger Tucson. One with less culture. Sure, there are caveats.
Naturally.
Las Vegas will magnify and exploit susceptibilities. So should the prospective resident suffer, oh, a gambling habit, drinking or substance abuse dependencies, um, untoward sexual appetites, all which might’ve been kept under relative check back in Nowheresville, all that – and more! – will likely have the freest rein in extreme Southern Nevada.
Oh! The providers who will accommodate and satisfy these proclivities are immeasurable! Each will do so with the biggest, cheesiest grins possible.
Trust me. I know. Wink!
People with impulse control problems should not reside here. Las Vegas will happily cater to these … to the weakling’s last cent. Then, once the unfortunate invariably bottoms out, rather than provide programs to wean him or her off illnesses or deviances, leave them to fate.
Las Vegas must be among the most “leave ‘em to fate” place in the country.
Know all those missions which have sprouted around America to save this bunch of degenerates or that mob of losers? In those locales, the “there by God go I” brigades only make the shallowest dents. While there are similar do-gooder operations in Las Vegas, the tide overwhelms. The same fingers sufficiently holding back breaches in other places are swamped here.
That’s the greatest difference between the Northeast and this Southwest. Alluring as one finds inexpensive living, the burdens one required shouldering in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and, okay, throw in the Midwest (don’t want to hear from any Jane Adams acolytes), regions provided the nation’s best social services.
Yes, residents there complain. And yes, many fleeing to sunnier economic climes claim excessive taxes drove them away.
That dodge can’t be claimed by this correspondent. A whole bunch of other circumstances created his migration. The costs exacted from a kind society the very least of them.
However, ours were mannered and more orderly communities. Secular ones which actually followed precepts those crowding – and avoiding – the overtly spiritually shouting parts demand of our society in general.
You know. Feed the hungry. Clothe the poor. Shelter the homeless. There, instead of hiding behind lip service, we put our money where our mouths were. There, we did more than let belief suffice and permit that to cleanse our consciences.
Las Vegas makes the different imperatives apparent. A far more libertarian society than the egalitarian East, the individual is far more responsible for him- or herself on this side of the Continental Divide.
Do schools anywhere still require students to read Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener? Or have them watch the black & white same-titled short film? Probably not. Too bad. The discussions afterwards should challenge what individuals and communities oblige one another. Heady stuff indeed for hormone-besotted teen-age minds. The intent isn’t to form fully grown but plant seeds.
By mature adulthood these seeds ought to grow into stout oaks; those into forests. We’re lucky if any develop into copses.
Can individual accomplishment be more lionized and highly praised than in Nevada’s arid expanse? And can’t an individual’s failure be disregarded with a sort of blitheness worth indictment? Why, isn’t “self-made” right along with “elite” and “VIP” in the Las Vegas pantheon of overused and vapid descriptions?
Hey. Three questions.
None of us are “self-made.” The two indicators of privilege have been so diminished their values have become verbal junk bonds.
Las Vegas license allows and the response extended if calamity befalls no longer shocks. Did it ever?
The human wreckage creating argy-bargy by clogging pavement or at intersections ceased astounding weeks into this relocation. That’s sad because the same conditions east would’ve been rare, and these would’ve engendered a reaction. Okay. At least a “poor devils” pang.
Instead, let us buy into this: such people have done whatever to themselves. Their lack of control has brought them low. Only they can lift themselves from their plights. That won’t happen. We proceed intending our utmost to avoid their fates.