Hippies

One reason Las Vegas holds a special meaning to Raoul Duke stems from his involvement in the “hippie” counter-culture of the ‘60s. The movement centered around San Francisco and California and many of those involved hoped that this new culture would spread across the entire United States and defeat the old, evil forces of hatred and war. But for some reason, it never really escaped California.
If San Francisco symbolized all that was right about the new culture, Las Vegas represents all that is wrong with the old culture. It is a place where people have an unrestrained self-interest and don’t care about others or morality. Duke seems to almost blame Las Vegas for stopping the spread of the counter-culture. “…we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost [i]see[/i] the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back,”(68) Thompson writes. Perhaps it was Raoul Duke’s involvement in that new culture which engendered in him this disgust of the people and culture of Las Vegas. The hippies may have been just as decadent as the people of Las Vegas, but at least they were fighting for the right reasons.