We have just returned from Las Vegas. We went down for the wedding of the daughter of my wife Mac’s close friend Darlene, Courtney and her husband Jason. It was wonderful. Everything you would expect from a wedding in Vegas complete as it was with a pink Cadillac, an Elvis impersonator officiating and ‘Viva Las Vegas’ as the musical backdrop. It was a non-stop three day party that left us crying ‘Uncle!’.

Visiting Vegas at least for me is kind of like visiting your sick uncle. He’s a lot of fun but you leave troubled. I have been reflecting on the experience since we came home. Vegas is a dystopian distortion of reality but you know that before you arrive so you get ready for the ‘shock’ that it is. Even with that though, I have to say that the image of a very heavy man wearing a blond Trump wig, an American flag vest, cowboy boots and NOTHING else was quite a sight. He was as naked as the day be was born. I can’t unsee it although judging by the thousands who just walked by him not even bothering to look up, most barely (forgive me) noticed him. I had gone for a walk along Freemont Street which if you haven’t been to Vegas is the butt end of the city, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. He was standing directly across from two bare chested Chippendale dancers, the visual contrast made even sharper as he waved a placard proclaiming America’s greatness. It didn’t help that it was 7:30am!

Each morning we would gather with our friends for breakfast, kind of a regroup for all the wounded soldiers. Inevitably talk turned to winning and losing, gambling of course being the core offering in Vegas. Most offered that they had lost money which shouldn’t have caught anybody by surprise. One of our friends captured the truth of the essential Vegas experience when he said to nobody in particular “Vegas wasn’t built on winners.” He didn’t mean to be ironic he meant it as some sort of strange consolation “Hey don’t worry ya losers, you’re in good company.” We all laughed, which was also a weird response. Vegas will do that to you.

On our taxi ride out to the airport we chatted to the cabbie, a very nice friendly woman. She’d lived in Vegas for twenty years and was incredibly proud of her son who was in his final year of medical school. She asked us about other countries we’d visited and we told her about going to Mexico each winter.

“That is so dangerous!” more statement than conversation.

I typically love these exchanges with perfect strangers “Well the cartel is a big deal in Mexico but for the most part it doesn’t affect tourists. I mean there’s violence in every American city, everyday.”

“Oh, that is not the same at all!”

Her blunt, unamused tone indicated she didn’t have anytime for even a suggestion of criticism of her country and as I had no appetite for any sort of argument with this perfect stranger I let it go. But that exchange has stayed with me. It is for me at least very troubling. I was gobsmacked. She was living in Vegas in 2017, the year that Stephen Paddock, an angry 64 year old gambler, opened fire on a country concert from the Mandalay Bay hotel, firing over a thousand rounds of ammunition from twenty-three weapons, raining death down on the crowd. After he was all done close on sixty country music fans were dead and nearly five hundred suffered gunshot wounds.

“Oh, that’s not the same at all!”

No. it’s not! It was the worst mass shooting in US history and just one example of a plague of shooting violence that has overwhelmed the US, a country with over 400,000,000 million weapons in civilian hands. Add to that one hundred and fifty murders annually in Vegas, signs everywhere telling patrons that ‘Weapons are not permitted’ and a palpable malevolent energy all about and I just don’t understand what she is not seeing.

She is like the rest of us though. We see what we want to see and for this woman and I suspect millions of other Americans they don’t want to see the cancer that is so obvious to the naked eye. Who among us would? Vegas is lipstick on a pig. Beneath all the glitz and glamour it is uncaring, unseeing, unmindful perhaps even unaware, its residents devoted acolytes to the claim of American Exceptionalism.

I agree America is indeed exceptional.

Just not in the same way. Not in the way they want.

“That’s not the same at all.“