Reflecting On 13 Years Of Blogging And How America Has Changed

I have been blogging for 13 years now and I have witnessed how America has changed.

When I first started blogging, MassPrivateI was more geared towards private investigators and attorneys. In 2009, I began posting stories about what the reality of the criminal justice system is versus what’s reported. As a result, my blog has morphed into focusing on privacy and civil rights.

In 2015, I realized that other private investigators wouldn’t dare comment about our criminal justice system’s shortcomings, let alone blog about it. I was on my own in a profession dominated by former police officers. These were individuals who did not appreciate my candor or in-depth investigations into the criminal justice system they represented.  I thought to myself, people need to see how bad the criminal justice system is. And I did this while the CSI effect was sweeping the nation and promoting the idea that law enforcement is infallible.

As more and more newspapers trimmed their staff, I noticed a frightening trend that has continued to this day. Investigative reporting as we once knew it was gone, and was being replaced by Fox News and other questionable news sources.

The driving force behind my blogging is for an America I once knew…a pre-9/11 America. A country that did not treat everyone like a suspected criminal or terrorist in the making.

A country that once treated law enforcement as a public calling, now treats police officers like heroes for shooting, tasing, and beating people of color on a scale that makes the U.N. and Human Rights Watch condemn us. (Click here to see the U.N. resolution and here to see Human Rights Watch resolution.)

A country that uses 9/11 and the pandemic to keep Americans in a constant state of fear the likes of which this country has not seen since the Civil War. For example, when a bigoted media kept Americans afraid of the Black man and stirred racial prejudices to a fever pitch for decades after the Civil War ended. (To learn more click here, here and here.)

As Homeland Security’s “See Something Say Something” program has morphed into a culture of suspicion and reporting on your neighbor[s], a state-of-fear has gripped our country for 20 years and counting.

As the Rutherford Institute points out, “we’ll all be targeted under the government’s new precrime program”

“In the blink of an eye, ordinary Americans will find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.”

“This is how you turn a nation of citizens into snitches and suspects.”

Things have only gotten worse since COVID-19 first appeared in March 2020.

Petrified Americans are reporting non-mask wearers and businesses for ignoring lockdown orders.

A country driven by fear is a country destined to lose its civil rights. A country spoon-fed “if it bleeds, it leads” news stories about COVID-19, is country that has lost its moral compass and is being lead by mainstream media fear-mongering. (To learn more click here.)

I fear that the Pre-9/11 America that I knew, will become nothing more than a children’s bedtime story that will be told to generations of kids about how America was once a relatively free country.

Watching police brutality explode into BLM protests across the country has resulted in next to nothing in the way of actual police reform. A state can adopt police reform laws to give the appearance that they got rid of qualified immunity; until there is a federal law banning it, nothing is going to change.

Police unions and large corporations have fought or donated funds to keep things exactly the way they are with regards to reform. Instead of being instruments of change, police unions have been hard at work backing anti-protest bills in at least 13 states and large corporations have been donating money towards anti-protest bills across the country.

Police unions are making absurd claims that police reform will result in more shootings and deaths and that qualified immunity is an “essential part of policing and American jurisprudence” and that talks about ending qualified immunity “is not a constructive path forward.”

For every police spokesperson and corporate shill who claims to care about police reform in the media, there are more of them working behind the scenes to criminalize and ban police brutality protests.

Without significant changes from the White House on police reform, nothing will change.

If police unions have their way, DHS, Fusion Centers and law enforcement will carry on with their business as usual model of treating everyone as suspected or potential criminals.

If this continues, an America free from the liberty-crushing laws of  9/11 becomes nothing more than Hollywood fiction. These are the reasons I believe America has changed for the worse. And because of you, my readers, I will continue to write about these issues.