Stephen Paddock's Vacation

Dropping Deep Cuts on you Studs and Sadies from a LONG TIME AGO

The City of Las Vegas is a microcosm of American vice in any given era. So to understand it, you need to understand the (downward) trajectory of American Culture.

First and foremost, Adams observed that the American people expressed a level of avarice that was historically unprecedented - even the best racial and social stock did at the point of America’s formal inception. So we began history in a sense while afflicted with a terrible spiritual tension between greed and piety, both of which were always as hungry for an outlet as a junkie is for a fix.

Secondly, the American West hosts a mythology unto itself that entails a belief that any man, regardless of station, can strike gold out in the desert, if he’s sufficiently brash, brazen, ruthless and a skilled enough hustler. Vegas was built in the middle of a literal desert and it became a magnet for America’s evil and heroic archetypes - cowboys, Indians, bloodletters, badmen, sheen-suited Chicago wiseguys, their pornographically alluring gun molls, immigrant entrepreneurs with no moral compass, and grifters by trade. A component of the ‘‘American Dream’’ entails a belief that any man can be rich, concomitant with a rather crude and boyish reverence for miscreants. Both of these things are attributable to a pervasive cultural narcissism and the fact that American society is highly conformist and boring.

Finally, a basic absence of creativity and an inordinate value assigned to hedonism and perceived status in the minds of Americans leads them to seek out pre-crafted experiences that they believe will distinguish them and mark them as sufficiently “worldly” to be valued by an anonymous audience of their fellow Americans. So they seek out environs like Las Vegas to feel both “authentic and to in a counterfeit kind of way and to demonstrate to others that they have acquired sensual experiences that they thing are equated with the good life.

After its over, they return to middle class drudgery or trailer park Hell, bossy wives and wifely bosses, moronic consumption that harms their ability to earn a living and that breeds even more nihilism - all for the honor of sharing their Vegas pics on Facebook to convince other people they’re not actually complete stiffs.

Of course, if you’re young and have wanderlust and aren’t a shithead in America, you’re in luck b/c the world’s biggest highway system is outside your front door. So you can escape the madness of everybody else by driving to the Oregon coast and doing a lot of dope while parked at the beach and nobody will really bother you. Or you can drive due South and try to navigate backroads that existed since Sherman plotted the same route and observe people who sweat history like n*gger running backs sweat Gatorade - but none of these appeal to Homo Americanus at present because there won’t be an audience there to witness them trying to act out the dinner theatre version of HBO Original Programming like the could in Vegas. - Thomas777 (2009 thereabouts)