I remember a period in American news history where, every night, for at least 20 minutes, for months or possibly years, there was a segment on the dangers of salmonella in the kitchen, salmonella cultured from samples in a seemingly clean kitchen, salmonella here, salmonella there, salmonella everywhere. I guess nothing was happening that year. But whatever the news is trying to scare people with, I always think about all those salmonella scare segments from when i was a kid.

doesn't amerikkka have something similar about how every street corner in detroit/chicargo/wherever is swarmed by teens who are Definitely smoking fentynol?

Yeah, we absolutely do. All the white boomers living in the suburbs that surround all our cities are terrified to go in to the cities because they think it's constant guerilla warfare with roaming gangs of murder-thieves. They really, seriously believe it and the fear is real. It's bizarre and absurd. They live in this firmly entrenched delusional world created by the 24 hour news cycle.

Meanwhile there's less violent crime in the US than at any point in the last, idk, 50 years.

Something I think about a lot, under one of the law codes in "Viking" Europe, apparently slaves were legally allowed to carry a knife of a given size and use it in self defense even against free people. That just sticks with me - Medieval slaves were allowed to carry a knife, trusted to do so, it was considered normal and unexceptional. Knives are one of our oldest, most important tools. The idea of free people being forbidden from carrying a simple knife under threat of being thrown in a cage strikes me as irredeemably perverse.