My distrust of government and the notion of justice started at a very young age

I can remember it as if it was something that happened to me last week even though it was close to 30 years ago. It was a very frustrating time in my life and before that, I still believed that there was such at thing as justice being blind and impartial. As I got older there were many more examples but this is one that really sticks out in my mind.

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It's a nice idea that justice would be, in fact, blind regardless of your wealth, connections, and social standing but unfortunately the world simply isn't like that. If you are one of the ones that found real justice in life I think that this might be more of a case of coincidence rather than the system actually not being rigged.

My example comes from when I was a rather poor student in the beginning stages of my college education. Like a lot of students who didn't come from wealthy parents, I worked a job in order to pay my rent and since I didn't have time to work very many hours nor did I have a terribly nice paying job, I lived in apartments that were probably just a few stages above condemned. The first apartment I lived in after moving out of the dorms was a true dump and looking back I can't believe that I ever lived there. I mean it was really bad.

The first day we moved in two of the windows were missing and the landlord tried to act as though me and my roommate at the time were stealing windows. It took a lot of phone calls to get this guy to come down and actually provide us with a completely sealed residence. The apartment was also an absolute mess. It was filthy and I'm sure that my father who came into town to help me move was probably a bit worried about me.

Since I never had a place of my own I just rolled with the punches and made the best of it. About a year later, my roommate and I were doing a bit better financially so we decided to move on out of there. The time and effort we put into cleaning the apartment before we moved out was pretty immense and it was definitely in better shape than it was when we moved in.

When it came time to inquire about our deposit, which wasn't even a lot of money, the landlord basically refused to give any of it back to us claiming all sorts of reasons why and none of them were true. I had quite a lot of evidence that he was wrong and later threatened over the phone to take him to court if he stuck with his idea of not returning any of our deposit. The person on the phone that worked at the same agency simply told me "go ahead... you're not going to win. Little did I know.... the person had a very good reason for this level of arrogance.

Come the day of the trial in small claims court myself and my roommate turned up early and there were a lot of other cases that the judge had to hear that days as well. When I looked around the courtroom I noticed that Keith Moore wasn't even there. Hours went by and he still wasn't there. Despite the fact that the cases were numbered the judge skipped our number and moved on to the case after ours. By the time Keith Moore bothered to turn up to the courtroom there was only about a half-dozen people still in the courtroom.

You may be aware of this but if you do not turn up to plead your case the court will almost always rule against you. Keith was no doubt aware of this but he had no fear of missing his case and why do you think that is?

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Despite the fact that our case was numerically well before many of the other cases that were heard that day our case was the VERY LAST case that was heard that day and Keith Moore turned up just about 10 minutes before our case began. Despite the fact that I had a ton of evidence including photos of the before and after state of the apartment, the judge very swiftly ruled against us for the return of the deposit. At one point the judge actually shouted at my roommate for asking a question about the law.

Keith Moore clearly knew this judge and had been tipped off as to what time he should turn up for the case. There is no other way to explain the out-of-sequence way in which our case was heard and the fact that he turned up confidently several hours of after court was in session.

Months later, when I was working my job at a pizza place, Keith Moore came into the restaurant and guess who was sitting with him? It was the same judge that was overseeing the small claims court the day of my trial.

It would be nice if there was some sort of actual justice where both Keith and the judge would be in serious trouble for this sort of thing but if a judge is corrupt, who are you going to appeal to? It was largely because of that day that I determined I was never going to put myself in situations where I would feel as though a court, any court was actually ever going to event attempt to serve me or anyone else in the public.

The people who have connections are the ones who are going to win in the eyes of the so called "law" and this is why I will do everything I can to never rely on it. This is a big part of the reason why I am so anti big government. This idea that the government is ever going to help you is nonsense. It is designed to protect the rich and to squash people like me, even if it was over a paltry $400.

I was delighted when I found out that someone considerably more violent than I am was also ripped off by Keith Moore but instead of taking him to court, this guy found him on the streets and beat the hell out of him. Normally I would be opposed to anyone getting a beat down like this, but in Keith Moore's case, that is probably the only real justice that he is ever going to face.

my apologies for that being so long, but as you might be able to tell, this tiny incident is something that stays on my mind all these years later