Fear and libertarianism in Las Vegas

Great God, Vegas is an awful place. I realised this the moment I arrived. My cab driver — who’d been perfectly agreeable en route from the airport — mistook my post-flight sluggishness for reluctance to give him a tip, and drove off angrily cursing me as I fumbled in my pockets. The line just for the check-in desk was about a mile long. Everyone was fat and drunk and dressed for the beach. Outside it was too hot: 105°F at 5 p.m. Inside, it was too cold from the relentless air-conditioning. Everywhere had the style and charm and tastefulness of Redditch. By day three I’d had enough.

‘Don’t stay in Vegas more than three days,’ people had warned me. And people were right. It’s more than enough. Four days would definitely drive you mad. Five days just wouldn’t happen: no one would be that stupid. So that’s what I thought as I asked the company travel operator to rebook my flight. I checked with my boss at Breitbart if it would be OK to leave early. ‘Of course,’ said Larry. ‘You need time with your family.’

But then something terrible happened. I think probably drugs were to blame. They usually are in Vegas stories. It only occurred to me subsequently how much cultish literature and how many weird movies there are about people getting to Vegas, getting trapped in Vegas, or leaving Vegas and coming down hard. The reason for this is quite simple: you can only survive Vegas if you learn to love it — and to do that you must first sell it your soul.