A Tragic Shift Just One Year Has Made in America
In late October 2024, the landscape was completely different. Ahead of the US presidential election, thoughtful residents could recognize the country's serious imperfections – its injustices and disparity – yet they still could perceive it as the US. A democratic nation. A place where constitutional order held significance. A nation headed by a dignified and upright public servant, notwithstanding his older age and increasing frailty.
These days, in late October 2025, numerous citizens scarcely know the land we inhabit. Persons suspected of being unauthorized foreigners are collected and shoved into vehicles, occasionally denied due process. The East Wing of the presidential residence – is being destroyed for a grotesque ballroom. The president is harassing his opponents or supposed enemies and insisting federal prosecutors surrender a huge total of taxpayer money. Uniformed troops are deployed into American cities on false pretexts. The military command, renamed the War Department, has practically freed itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny during its expenditure of possibly reaching close to a trillion USD of taxpayer money. Colleges, legal practices, media outlets are submitting due to presidential intimidation, and billionaires are regarded as nobility.
“The United States, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the globe's top democratic nation, has crossed the limit toward dictatorship and extremism,” an American historian, commented this past summer. “Finally, faster than I believed likely, it transpired in this country.”
One awakes amid recent atrocities. And it is challenging to understand – and distressing to accept – how severely declined our nation is, and the rapid pace with which it has happened.
Nevertheless, it is known that the president was properly voted in. Even after his highly troubling initial presidency and following the alerts linked to the awareness of Project 2025 – following the president personally said publicly he planned to be a dictator just on day one – sufficient voters selected him instead of Kamala Harris.
As terrifying as the present situation are, it’s even scarier to realize that we are just three-quarters of a year into this presidential term. What will three more years of this deterioration leave us? And suppose that timeframe transforms into something even longer, because there is not anyone to restrain this leader from determining that another term is essential, possibly for security concerns?
Granted, there is still hope. There are midterm elections in 2026 that could create a new governmental control, if Democrats regain the Senate or House of parliament. There exist public servants who are trying to impose certain responsibility, such as Democratic congressmen that are starting a probe concerning the try to cash appropriation from legal authorities.
And a presidential election in the next cycle could start the path toward restoration precisely as the previous vote put us on this unfortunate course.
There exist millions of Americans marching in the streets throughout communities, similar to recent in the past days during anti-authority protests.
A former official, stated lately that “the slumbering force of the nation is awakening”, exactly as before following the Red Scare in the 1950s or amid the Vietnam war protests or in the Nixon controversy.
In those instances, the tilting vessel ultimately corrected itself.
Reich says he recognizes the signs of that resurgence and sees it happening currently. As evidence, he points to the recent massive protests, the widespread, bipartisan pushback to a television host's removal and the almost universal rejection by reporters to accept military mandates they report only what is sanctioned.
“The slumbering entity always remains dormant until specific greed turns extremely harmful, an specific act so contemptuous toward public welfare, specific cruelty so noisy, that he has no choice other than to stir.”
It’s an optimistic take, and I value the author's seasoned opinion. Perhaps he will prove to be right.
Meanwhile, the crucial issues persist: is the US able to return to normalcy? Can it reclaim its status internationally and its commitment to the rule of law?
Or should we recognize that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?
My negative thoughts indicates that the second option is correct; that everything could be lost. My positive feelings, nevertheless, tells me that we have to attempt, in whatever ways possible.
Personally, working in journalism analysis, that involves urging journalists to commit, more completely, to their mission of holding power to account. For different individuals, it may be working on congressional campaigns, or planning demonstrations, or discovering methods to defend electoral access.
Not even one year prior, we lived in a separate situation. A year from now? Or three years from now? The reality is, we don’t know. The only option is to attempt to not give up.
What Offers Me Hope Now
The contact I experience during teaching with new media professionals, that are simultaneously hopeful and grounded, {always
