America: Enter for a Chance to Win
By: Em Stonestreet
Tags: Life Lessons, Addiction, Economy, Society, Gambling

Four years ago, during the surreal transition period between Donald Trump being seen as a joke candidate and his enshrinement as the Republican party’s guiding light, I found the most revealing story about him to be the deliberate ruination of his failed casinos, ventures in which he won at everyone else’s expense.

A casino promises winning — so much winning. But it’s really a place where people inevitably lose. The more they lose, the more desperate they become, and the greater the dopamine hit each time the win is pulled from their grasp. A gambler is biochemically addicted not to winning, but to almost winning and then losing. The same might be said for Trump’s remaining supporters. The rest of us feel like the spouses of gambling addicts whose lives have been destroyed faster than we ever imagined possible.

Today in Las Vegas, the strip looks as empty as the desert that surrounds it. To prevent the spread of the virus, homeless people are given empty spaces in parking lots, each sleeping on asphalt six feet apart. Meanwhile, current discussions about how to fairly distribute any future vaccine include this solution: a lottery.

Well now everything dies baby that’s a fact

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty

And meet me tonight in Atlantic City — Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”

Some of my earliest memories are of walking across the ornate carpets of the casino floor, the sounds of coins clinking into slot machine trays, the clicking of a roulette wheel, the snap of playing cards flipped onto green velvet. And the signs — some flashing, others glowing with promises. So many ways to win.

People would pull the slot machine handle slowly, in a steady rhythm, then suddenly—as if to catch the machine by surprise. I myself, being a Hot Wheels collector, was lured by the cars spinning on turntables above machines promising “a chance to win” that very car, always shinier and newer than our own.

It was my good fortune to have my dad by my side. “There’s no winning here,” he said. “All these people are losing.”

In this way, he granted me the serenity to accept the human compulsion to win, the courage to resist the allure of nearly winning while steadily losing, and the wisdom to know the difference.

My family went to the casinos for all the perks underwritten by gamblers. A decadent surf-and-turf buffet subsidized by the gambling you won’t be doing? Free pass for a luxurious day spa? Ignore the beckoning machines and you might also enjoy a performance by the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. or Robin Williams.

In this respect, we were not unlike certain people, who, in what is now widely acknowledged to be a casino economy, take all the financial and tax benefits of any given Republican administration without suffering the many losses heaped upon the masses.

A pandemic appears to be a kind of loss from which even these people cannot remain insulated. The virus has a way of finding you whether you swim at the public pool or the country club, or assemble household appliances in a public or private prison. It finds you in the White House or in the penthouse, where everyone below you looks so very small.

“There’s no winning here. All these people are losing.”

My wife Lisa is from Stockton, California, an “All-America City” known for its record-breaking rates of homicide and illiteracy. The city recently filed for bankruptcy.

Lisa grew up in what was then the nicest area of town — streets and sidewalks perfectly paved, houses and lawns immaculate, lake still safe to swim in. And then as now, when a neighborhood shows signs of age, a new one is built. The city sprawls, covering up what is, in California’s Central Valley, some of the best farmland in the world.

To live in a newly minted American suburb (or exurb) is to see any trace of death, entropy, time itself, even place, swept away. It is, in many ways, like living inside a casino, absent of any and all reminders that loss is even possible. Everyone appears to be winning, and there is immense social pressure to keep up that appearance.

Americans who choose to live in such places may find the intrusion of reality to be so distressing, they react violently. What could be a more intrusive reality than a pandemic? Citizens who dare acknowledge the possibility of loss by wearing a mask? If anyone dared to wear a mask inside a casino, the spell, I imagine, would be broken.

A virus has its own aims. It is a machine that empties us out. Unlike a casino, it doesn’t bother with giving us a moment to feel classy.

After weeks of isolation, I had a case of what we used to call cabin fever. I hopped in my car and drove. Two hours later, I crossed into a landscape I’d never seen before and breathed a deep involuntary sigh of relief. A little farther down the road, I found myself entering a newly minted exurb that reminded me of the nicest parts of Stockton.

I pulled into a large city park. Immaculate lawns surrounded a brand-new playground. No children in sight. No parents. Not a soul in the entire park. I drove on, passing through an area called Old Town filled with shiny new storefronts, most of them shuttered because of the virus.

A virus has its own aims. It is a machine that empties us out. Unlike a casino, it doesn’t bother with giving us a moment to feel classy, to think we have skin in the game, that winning is within our grasp.

Years ago, a friend told me he was moving away from my hometown. The place had changed too much. “They should’ve never let those casinos get built here,” he said. “They ruined this town.” It was hard to argue otherwise. It was also hard to say who “they” was. In my experience, “they” is ultimately “us.”

Postcard photo of the Cal Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe. Colourpicture, Boston, MA / Public domain

In the 1980s, my father almost bought a casino. The main dining room was decorated with a white line denoting the California-Nevada border, which ran down the middle of the room and continued outside through the swimming pool, which overlooked Lake Tahoe.

As the sale neared, my dad walked with a new swagger, and so did I, although I was only 12 at the time. The very idea of him becoming a big-shot casino owner — what better way for us to prove we really were smarter and better than everyone else? We would win every time.

If you want to know what happened, this Wikipedia entry about the Cal Neva offers a clue:

Jon Perroton was arrested in 1985 for fraud after convincing Hibernia National Bank to loan him $23 million towards the purchase price of Cal Neva. He had claimed that he had the backing of Sheraton Hotels and Resorts. He was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in custody. That same year, the lodge was purchased by real estate developer Chuck Bluth.

Bluth would go on to become one of Tahoe’s wealthiest people. My father would die penniless. The Cal Neva bankrupted its next owner. It is currently owned by Larry Ellison.

If my father had succeeded in buying a casino, would I have become an insufferable narcissist, bragging about all the new ways we were emptying people out? Would our family’s Thanksgiving photos reek of self-congratulation? And would the ceaseless losses of others make the suffering and the sorrow of our family seem worth it?

When I arrived back home after my drive, my son asked me if I wanted to play badminton. We got out the racquets. He said, “We should open a casino called The Racket. You go there to bet on racquet sports.”

We laughed, mostly at the idea that we would seriously consider the venture. But I have to admit, for the briefest instant, I did.