A Tragic Shift a Single Year Has Brought in the US
One year ago, the landscape was entirely separate. Before the American presidential vote, reflective Americans could recognize the nation's deep flaws – its inequities and disparity – but they still could see it as the US. A free society. A country where the rule of law held significance. A country led by a honorable and ethical official, notwithstanding his advanced age and growing weakness.
Nowadays, in late October 2025, countless Americans scarcely know the nation we live in. Persons suspected of being undocumented migrants are collected and shoved into transport, sometimes blocked from fair treatment. The left side of the “people’s house” – is being destroyed for an obscene dance hall. The leader is persecuting his adversaries or supposed enemies and requesting the justice department transfer a massive sum of public funds. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched across metropolitan centers under fabricated reasons. The defense headquarters, renamed the Department of War, has – in effect – rid itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny during its expenditure of potentially totaling almost one trillion dollars in public funds. Universities, legal practices, news companies are yielding under the president’s threats, and rich magnates are handled as members of the royal family.
“The US, shortly prior to its 250th birthday as the globe's top democratic nation, has tipped over the brink toward dictatorship and fascism,” Garrett Graff, stated this past summer. “Finally, more quickly than I believed likely, it occurred in this country.”
Every morning starts with fresh terrors. And it's hard to comprehend – and painful to realize – just how far gone we are, and the rapid pace with which it occurred.
Nevertheless, we understand that Trump was duly elected. Even after his profoundly alarming initial presidency and even after the cautions that came with the awareness of the rightwing blueprint – even after the president personally declared plainly he intended to rule as a tyrant just on day one – a majority of citizens selected him instead of Kamala Harris.
Frightening as today's circumstances may be, it's more frightening to recognize that we’re only several months into this presidential term. What will three more years of this decline position us? And what if that period becomes an prolonged era, as there is nobody to restrain this president from opting that a third term is necessary, possibly for security concerns?
Admittedly, not everything is hopeless. There are congressional elections next year that may bring a different political equilibrium, in case Democrats regain one or both houses of parliament. We have public servants who are striving to impose a degree of oversight, for example Democratic congressmen currently launching an investigation regarding the effort to money grab from the justice department.
And a national vote in the next cycle could begin us down the road to healing just as the previous vote placed us on this unfortunate course.
There are countless citizens marching in urban areas across municipalities, like they performed recently at democracy demonstrations.
Robert Reich, stated lately that “the slumbering force of the nation is awakening”, exactly as before post-McCarthyism in the 1950s or during the sixties activism or throughout the seventies crisis.
On those occasions, the listing ship finally returned to balance.
He claims he knows the signals of that revival and observes it occurring at present. As evidence, he cites the widespread marches, the broad, bipartisan pushback to a personality's dismissal and the largely united refusal by journalists to agree to the defense department’s demands they solely cover approved content.
“The sleeping giant consistently stays dormant before specific greed becomes so noxious, a particular deed so disrespectful of societal benefit, some brutality so disruptive, that it has no choice except to rise.”
It’s an optimistic take, and I value his knowledgeable stance. Maybe he’ll prove to be right.
At the same time, the major inquiries endure: will the nation ever recover? Can it retrieve its standing internationally and its commitment to legal principles?
Or do we need to admit that the 250-year-old experiment succeeded temporarily, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?
My pessimistic brain suggests that the final scenario is accurate; that everything might be lost. My positive feelings, though, convinces me that we have to attempt, through all methods possible.
Personally, working in journalism analysis, that means encouraging reporters to commit, more fully, to their purpose of overseeing leadership. For others, it may be participating in political races, or planning demonstrations, or discovering methods to safeguard voting rights.
Under twelve months back, we existed in an alternate reality. In the future? Or in several years? The reality is, we are uncertain. The only option is to attempt to not give up.
What Provides Me Hope Now
The engagement I encounter in the classroom with new media professionals, who are both visionary and grounded, {always
