Twelve months back, the landscape was completely separate. Prior to the US presidential election, considerate Americans could acknowledge the nation's significant faults – its injustices and imbalance – yet they could still see it as America. A free society. A land where the rule of law carried weight. A country led by a dignified and upright leader, notwithstanding his elderly years and declining health.
These days, in late October 2025, numerous citizens barely recognize the country we reside in. Persons believed to be undocumented migrants are rounded up and shoved into vehicles, sometimes refused legal rights. The eastern section of the “people’s house” – is being torn down for a grotesque dance hall. Donald Trump is harassing his opponents or alleged foes and demanding the justice department transfer a huge total of citizen dollars. Soldiers with weapons are deployed into American cities with deceptive justifications. The defense headquarters, rebranded the War Department, has practically rid itself of regular press examination as it spends possibly reaching nearly $1tn of taxpayer money. Institutions, attorney offices, news companies are submitting due to presidential intimidation, and rich magnates are handled as nobility.
“America, shortly prior to its 250-year mark as the globe's top democratic nation, has fallen over the limit toward dictatorship and fascism,” a noted author, stated this past summer. “Finally, swifter than I believed likely, it occurred here.”
One awakes amid recent atrocities. It is difficult to grasp – and agonizing to acknowledge – how severely declined we are, and the rapid pace with which it occurred.
However, we know that the president was properly voted in. Even after his highly troubling initial presidency and even after the alerts associated with the understanding of the rightwing blueprint – following the president personally declared plainly he planned to act as an autocrat solely at the start – a majority of citizens chose him rather than the other candidate.
As terrifying as the present situation may be, it's more frightening to understand that we’re only several months into this presidential term. Where will another 36 months of this decline find us? And if the three years turns into a more extended duration, because there is nobody to limit this president from opting that additional tenure is required, maybe for national security reasons?
Admittedly, there is still hope. There will be midterm elections in 2026 that could create a new political equilibrium, in case Democrats recapture the Senate or House of the legislature. There are elected officials who are striving to impose a degree of oversight, for example representatives currently launching an investigation into the attempted fund seizure from the justice department.
And a presidential election in the next cycle could start us down the road toward restoration precisely as last year’s election set us on this regrettable path.
We see countless citizens demonstrating in the streets of their cities, similar to recent last weekend during anti-authority protests.
Robert Reich, wrote recently that “the slumbering force of the nation is stirring”, exactly as before post-McCarthyism during the fifties or throughout the Vietnam war protests or in the Nixon controversy.
In those instances, the listing ship finally returned to balance.
Reich says he knows the indicators of that awakening and sees it happening at present. For proof, he references the large-scale demonstrations, the broad, multi-faction opposition regarding a television host's removal and the near-unanimous defiance by media to sign military mandates they only publish authorized information.
“The sleeping giant consistently stays inactive until certain corruption becomes so noxious, some action so offensive of the common good, certain violence so loud, that it is compelled other than to stir.”
It's a positive outlook, and I appreciate Reich’s experienced view. Perhaps he will be validated.
In the meantime, the major inquiries endure: will the nation regain its footing? Can it reclaim its status globally and its devotion to constitutional order?
Or do we need to admit that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?
My negative thoughts tells me that the latter is accurate; that everything might be finished. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, advises me that we have to attempt, in whatever ways available.
In my case, as an observer of the press, that’s about encouraging reporters to live up, more fully, to their mission of holding power to account. For some people, it could mean engaging with election efforts, or planning demonstrations, or discovering methods to defend voting rights.
Not even one year prior, we were in an alternate reality. In the future? Or after another term? The truth is, we don’t know. Our sole course is try to not give up.
The contact I encounter with students with aspiring reporters, that are simultaneously idealistic and grounded, {always
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