LAS VEGAS has always been a magnet, drawing millions for the inspiration provided by its symbols and characters, and what it says about us and our society – viewed as a ceaseful for the crass or pleasure palace for the masses and its denizens, writers look at it as a religion, a disease, a nightmare or a paradise for misbegotten, in a quixotic inflammation of the senses with fiendish intensity and stimulation – the greatest Sin city, since God torched Sodom and Gomorrah.
It has succeeded to wire an entire city with its electrical stimulations, day and night, out in the middle of the dessert, with its buildings, no trees…only signs, they tower, they revolve, they oscillate. Its allure is more irresistible, as it takes care of both the old and the young, and it’s not a place where only one’s money counts.
It was the best time of the day, you’d like to take the kids on an outdoor fun and for the county music lovers, gather, dance and revel at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. All 22,000 in a quest for a little slice of fun…of the music and the night.
Then out of nowhere, in what at first everyone thought as firecrackers, a hail of bullets open fired, mowed them down, wreaking havoc perched on a hotel floor, spraying the crowd, relentless, in its fury…they were dancing and singing at the open door concert, next minute, they were fleeing for their lives, in all directions, in the worst shooting carnage in modern American history…gunned down by a valley of bullets, killing at least 59 innocent people and wounding 510.
That lone wolf open fired and changed and re-loaded, and as hundreds of missiles flashed and exploded from his automatic rifle, which gave way to his position. It was the smoke from rounds of ammunition or gun smoke filled the room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
He was firing at police patrol cars that descended on the scene (the music stopped for a while, and when the second pop burst, the performers started fleeing the stage, in every direction as bullets came, flying over them and the rest.
Bullets… that killed…
They consist of running bits of metals through the flesh of men…large, small, pointed, square, round splintered bits of metal that tear and kill.
It is not the metal in its natural state, but the metal fashioned by the intelligence of man – who’s great in building space ships and going to the moon.
Just one bullet is enough to kill a man; (the first time I saw an M-16 bullet, I almost cried) no need to fire a burst at him, because it moves at a speed of sound and its trajectory is always nearly off balance, so that when it arrives, it doesn’t stop inside the flesh like an ordinary bullet: no it doesn’t go through an arm or leg either, it twists and turns and tears and cuts and in a few minutes, it empties all the blood out of you.
Let’s take a bullet that is really well made and look at it. Who invented it? A man invented it. He calculated the form, the weight, the powder, the velocity, the trajectory, the moment of impact.
There was a test and a bullet was fired. At whom? At what? A dog, a cat, a piece of steel? Certainly not a man.
And the board of directors approve. Now, look at the factory full of workers making bullets, the kind proletariat Marx defended, and trade unions protect, the nice workers who are never guilty (the guilt is the businessman, that’s all)…the workers only carry out orders, the poor innocents, they’ve got to earn a living and keep their families and pay for their upkeep, haven’t they? Have they the time or means to ask themselves moral questions?
So they make bullets laboriously, carefully throwing out any defective ones, because if a bullet is imperfect, it doesn’t tear and doesn’t cut and does not empty all the blood out of the little yellow man who gets it when he’s 20 years old, defending a hill and a flag in Saigon, or out of the little white man in Iran or the big black man in Afghanistan. Now, they get a string of bullets in a butchery inside a movie house, malls, school rooms, even freeways; of the latest, a grassy outdoor concert of country music festival.
There are bullets as well in Moscow, Peking, and it isn’t a businessman who orders them, it is the State, which has exactly the same results, and the workers are exactly the same, maybe even more diligent, even more obedient.
One day, I’d like to visit a bullet factory in Kiev, Chicago or Shanghai. I’d like to look them all in the face…workers, directors, businessmen.
And finally, I’d like to look the inventor in the eyes…because he’s the best of all and most important!
