Got to Know When to Fold Them

In another thing right out of the Red State playbook, Montana has no sales tax and takes pride in their ability to keep taxes low. So faced with budget shortfalls and an inability to pay for a lot of services, the state did what any anti-tax, freedom loving state would do-- legalize gambling. There's Keno tables and video poker machines everywhere-- in restaurants, in bars, in coffee shops, in gas stations. Even worse, there's big signs saying "Casino" everywhere. You can't go more than a block on one of the main drags without at least four or five signs for a casino.

Now, part of me, the libertarian side, says if people want to go to casinos and gamble, go nuts. I don't care. Like most libertarian ideas, though, the idea is better in concept. I don't, for instance, begrudge Native American's rights to build casinos on their tribal lands, Lord knows they need any money they can get, but there's something sad and desperate about it. Which, pretty much sums up their existence anyways.

But here in Great Falls, it's different. The city is more working class/poor than middle class and except for a few nice neighborhoods and the old portion of the town, just one long series of chain stores and malls all off of main drags when it's not a series of dirt roads into RV parks. Here, the casinos are not some exciting, thrilling place to be, but just one more thing that makes the area ugly, not just ugly in aesthetics, but ugly to the soul. Not, "soul" in a religious sense, but "soul" as in the part of your mind/body that soars when listening to good music or good food or what have you. The casinos blend in with all of the pawn shops, quick loan stores, and Check N' Go stores into one stew of desperation. It's as if society and the government long since stopped caring about the people here, the people here did too.