Another day in Las Vegas, another depressing bunch of stories in the morning papers.

Today, for example, we learn that we rank really low (45th out of the 50 states) on the Milken Institute State Technology and Science Index. This is mostly due to the fact that our education system is poor, and not producing graduates who can go to work for high-tech firms. So while the Nevada Development Authority is advertising the state as a low-tax haven, and unsurprisingly drawing businesses that are too cheap to pay taxes, high-tech businesses yawn and move to states like California, Maryland and Massachusetts.

Speaking of education, it seems the Clark County School District has raised the drawbridge on hiring, even though it’s 791 teachers short for the school year that begins about a month from now. Classroom specialists and even administrators may be called upon to fill the gap. (And thus, education does not improve, and thus we don’t draw high-tech companies here, which even if we did wouldn’t matter since they wouldn’t pay taxes on gross revenues, etc. etc. etc.)

Meanwhile, instead of waking up to the dismal state of life in Nevada, the state Legislature is apparently trying to figure out how to do the very minimum to plug some budget holes, and leave the tough work for another day. The lonely, stentorian voice of Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio cautions “You can’t jump halfway across a river. We have to do it now. We can’t hope and pray that something is going to happen between now and February when every economic indicator indicates just the opposite.”

Alas, senator, you can jump halfway across a river. You just fall in when you do. And sadly for us, the river we’re trying to forge is called “Shit Creek.” (Paddles were eliminated in the last round of budget cuts.)

Maybe we need to consider a stark reality: Maybe, just maybe, we were never meant to be a real city, or a real state after all.

Think about it: We got into the Union back in 1864 because President Abraham Lincoln needed help in the Civil War. Nevada was such a godforsaken place that author Mark Twain wrote in a letter that “Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, that he would come here and loaf sadly around, awhile, and then get homesick and go back to hell again.” (At least Twain went on to say that he liked Nevada.)

In more modern times, Nevada was used to supply power to Los Angeles (Boulder/Hoover Dam), to build war machines (at a site in Henderson so disrespected they dumped toxic chemicals in unlined pools; today, they want to put houses on it!), and, of course, to serve as the nation’s red-light district with the legalization, banning and re-legalization of gambling. Nevada was far enough away from civilization, in a territory naturally hostile to human life, that nobody really cared. Oh, and the toxic dumping history is still with us (Yucca Mountain).

So what about building a life and a culture here? Nobody seems interested. They come for jobs, not for amenities. Visitors come to cut loose and have Bacchanalian weekends they could never get away with at home, and then to slink back secure in the knowledge that what happens here stays here. We don’t resent it. Hell, we advertise it! You can come here and be the person you can’t be anywhere else. Social mores? Who needs ‘em in a place where “last call” is the punchline to a joke.

Meanwhile, thanks to a healthy dose of western libertarianism and greed in equal measures, grifters from back allies to corporate suites come to Las Vegas to make their fortune. Creating a sense of community, by and large, isn’t a big priority for them. Creating the image of prosperity, and fun, and wild abandon, that’s important. It’s one of the reasons you can underpay teachers all day long, but if you say something bad about some guy’s pool party or nightclub, well, them’s fighting words!

Since people here are typically unengaged with politics or public life, grifters in politics manage to get elected in droves. We reject smart, savvy and progressive politicians in favor of amoral dunces who don’t care if children go without food, so long as their re-election is assured. (There’s plenty of people for whom this is not true at all; still, most of them lack the courage to stand up and fight hard for a better tomorrow, fearing how they’ll be pilloried in the next election.)

We live in a state where this actually happened: As the Legislature convenes for its every-other-year confab that occasionally touches on what kind of state we really want to be, Gov. Jim Gibbons happily used a state cell phone to send what we’re sure were very charming text messages to a woman not his wife. Like, more than 850 messages. While he was supposed to be working.

The media? The largest paper in town, the Review-Journal, can’t find its voice to say anything bad about Gibbons, because he’s a Republican under attack by Democrats, although that paper would have long since defenestrated a Democrat who’d done half of what our incumbent has gotten away with doing. And while the paper regularly crusades against hardworking public employees because their paychecks come from taxes, big business can pretty much get away with doing whatever it wants. It’s left to the Las Vegas Sun to tell us that, in the rush to build ever larger cogs in the wheel of fantasy that is Las Vegas, people are literally dying.

That’s Vegas, baby! Hell, most the country still thinks that the mob runs the town. (In truth, it’s worse than that. It’s Wall Street.)

Meanwhile, a few, a lonely few, argue against the grain. Chancellor Jim Rogers argues for bettering our education system. Former Boyd Gaming chief Don Snyder struggles to erect a performing arts center, just because people should have a place to see great performing arts. Non-profit organizations are stretched to the limit to mend the myriad holes in the social safety net that government allows to unravel because God forbid we should all pay the price of civilization. Anybody who mentions taxes as a solution is shouted down with right-wing talking points until they just go away.

And we let them get away with it, when we should be outraged. But look! I have 500 channels on my cable TV, my cell phone plays movies and delivery pizza is just a phone call away. What’s so wrong with Vegas?

Maybe we’re getting exactly the city we deserve. And maybe Mother Nature was trying to tell us something about this expanse of dry, unforgiving desert where we’ve carved a city that very likely was never meant to exist.

No, not a city, really. Just a vast collection of dorms for a vast collection of unconnected people, pursuing their own interests above everything else, for however long the mirage lasts. Then it’s on to the next boomtown, the next buck, the next illusion.

Maybe the whole thing just wasn’t meant to be.