One sad lesson learned from suffering permanent interior damage from an unregulated supplement described as “gentle” in the book that recommended it was the double standard in this country between white collar and blue collar crime.
The ignorant idiot that recommended the tincture, as well as the people who marketed and sold it, not only got away with no consequences for the criminal act, but thanks to America’s long tradition of snake oil and romanticization of alternative and “natural” cures, there were no civil damages for me to collect as well. Powerful natural medication lobby aside, there are loads of true believers in Congress as to the benefits of natural cures. Lawyers won't bother to put in the time to sue a small time publisher or vendor.
Three recently died from taking the “gas station heroin” known as Kratom, and more have gotten addicted.
I know from dealing with doctors and emergency rooms, that the basic formula involving the US National Womens Gymnastics Team and Larry Nasser is accurate: Low status Americans just get ignored when they contact law enforcement regarding high status ones.
Put bluntly, there is no broken windows or three strikes for white collar crime.
I say this because, we are now undergoing a debate and small civil war over the issue of blue-collar crime in American cities. San Francisco so far has avoided having the National Guard sent, because it began to take some basic safety measures beginning with the replacement of the so-called Justice DA Chesa Boudin. Los Angeles also replaced the controversial George Gascon, but right now is caught up in a separate standoff involving illegals and ICE. Following the murder of Iryna Zarutska, the North Carolina legislature along with Governor Josh Stein instituted several criminal justice reforms, including doing away with cash free bail in certain circumstances. Portland and Chicago are involved in a similar tug-of-war involving crime reduction versus the price paid by suspension of civil liberties.
I personally think it's a stupid idea to downplay the existence of violent crime in mostly blue cities as I recently experienced the menace of a schizophrenic homeless person, and observed my elderly female Uber driver dealing with one coming right to her car window.
But today I read another article about some 13 year-old girl who was a lively student with an entire future ahead of her that went down some ugly rabbit hole on some social media platform, and wound up, following encouragement, killing herself. It seems like there's one of these kids a month, that we know of. Each story just breaks your heart. There may be others in other countries that make the number higher.
The fact that social media companies valued at $200 billion can't hire customer service representatives to remove the sites that are preying on American children - after receiving specific notification from parents - is another example of this ugly white vs blue collar double standard as we approach the 250th anniversary of the country.
As I continue to say, you can be a good libertarian and let the market decide, you can be a good Judeo-Christian, but you can't be both.