Word: nevadas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Nevada's Great Basin is a paranoid Holy Land, and no place is better suited for the job. Topography is destiny out here. It is the only region in North America where falling water has no outlet to the ocean (it lies trapped, then evaporates back into the atmosphere). The thin, spreading crust of the valley floors is notoriously unstable, agitated. Hot springs steam up through faults and fissures. Whirling dust devils dance across the flats. The mountain ranges are new, still rising, alive; perched on top of this tectonic tumult, the structures of civilization seem to teeter. The schools...
...Navy buddies are swigging tequila around a blazing fireplace. They narrate the day's maneuvers with swooping hand gestures while a giggling, shirtless young prostitute looks on. She seems unimpressed by the flyboys' classified briefing. At the bar, a middle-aged cowboy quietly raves about a plot to swamp Nevada in methamphetamine ("crank"). The cowboy doesn't want his name used (few people do out here), but he does want the alleged drug ring to know he's on to them. "I have a friend who personally knows the retired politician who's behind all this. And believe me, this...
Manipulation by distant Mr. Bigs is an obsession here. Almost 90% of Nevada's land is owned and managed by the Federal Government--a distant imperial power to many locals. Ranching and mining are major industries, and both are feeling persecuted lately by certain cosmopolitan outsiders. In Eureka the taverns sell a T shirt bearing the words WRANGLERS: WESTERN RANCHER AGAINST NO GOOD LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALIST S___HEADS. The pickup trucks sport a proud, defensive bumper sticker: IF IT WASN'T GROWN, IT HAD TO BE MINED. In a region where people's lives are dominated by forces beyond their power...
...cynicism about government out here because it's so far away," says Gibbons. "Every state has its believers in black helicopters, but our real problem is that the rest of the country sees us as a solution to its problems. Everybody wants to dump their waste here, but Nevada is not America's wasteland." When Gibbons half jokes that his district represents "the hub of the world, the middle of everywhere," a nearby constituent nods with no apparent sense of irony...
...beans, and do their loop-the-loops and smash things up, and then their superiors cover up for them. They don't want bad news to get out. We locals know, though." Presumably Wolfers is talking about the Navy again, although he never specifies who "they" are. In central Nevada, "they" might be anyone...