A Heartbreaking Change Just One Year Has Made in the US
In late October 2024, the landscape was entirely separate. Prior to the US presidential election, reflective citizens could recognize America's deep flaws – its inequities and inequality – yet they continued to perceive it as the US. A democratic nation. A place where constitutional order carried weight. A country headed by a honorable and ethical official, despite his elderly years and increasing frailty.
Nowadays, in late October 2025, many of us scarcely know the country we inhabit. People believed to be undocumented migrants are detained and pushed into transport, at times blocked from fair treatment. The East Wing of the “people’s house” – is being torn down for a grotesque dance hall. The leader is harassing his political rivals or supposed enemies and demanding legal authorities hand over a massive sum of taxpayer money. Armed military personnel are being sent across metropolitan centers on false pretexts. The defense headquarters, renamed the War Department, has effectively liberated itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends potentially totaling close to a trillion USD of taxpayer money. Institutions, attorney offices, journalism organizations are yielding from leader's menaces, and billionaires are handled as nobility.
“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the limit into autocracy and fascism,” an American historian, wrote in August. “In the end, swifter than I believed likely, it did happen in America.”
One awakes with fresh terrors. It is hard to comprehend – and distressing to accept – how deeply lost we are, and how quickly it has happened.
However, it is known that Trump was legitimately chosen. Despite his profoundly alarming initial presidency and following the warnings associated with the awareness of Project 2025 – despite the leader directly said publicly he planned to rule as a tyrant just on day one – enough Americans selected him rather than the other candidate.
Frightening as today's circumstances are, it's more frightening to recognize that we’re only several months into this administration. What will another 36 months of this decline position us? And what if the three years transforms into something even longer, since there is nobody to limit this president from deciding that additional tenure is essential, maybe for national security reasons?
Certainly, not everything is hopeless. There will be midterm elections next year that could bring a different balance of power, in case Democrats recapture one or both houses of the legislature. There are government representatives who are trying to exert some accountability, such as Democratic congressmen currently starting a probe into the attempted cash appropriation by federal prosecutors.
And a leadership election in the next cycle could initiate us down the road to recovery exactly as the prior selection put us on this disappointing trajectory.
There exist millions of Americans marching in urban areas of their cities, like they performed last weekend during anti-authority protests.
A former official, commented this week that “the dormant powerhouse of the nation is awakening”, exactly as before following the Red Scare during the fifties or throughout the Vietnam war protests or throughout the Nixon controversy.
On those occasions, the tilting vessel eventually was righted.
He claims he knows the indicators of that awakening and sees it happening at present. As support, he references the widespread marches, the extensive, bipartisan pushback against a personality's dismissal and the largely united rejection by reporters to agree to military mandates they solely cover approved content.
“The sleeping giant always remains asleep till some venality turns extremely harmful, some action so disrespectful of societal benefit, specific cruelty so noisy, that it is compelled other than to stir.”
It's a hopeful perspective, and I appreciate the author's seasoned opinion. Perhaps he will prove to be right.
In the meantime, the major inquiries remain: will the nation ever recover? Can it reclaim its position internationally and its devotion to constitutional order?
Or should we recognize that the national endeavor worked for a while, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?
My negative thoughts suggests that the latter is accurate; that all may indeed be lost. My optimistic spirit, though, convinces me that we have to attempt, through all methods possible.
Personally, as a media critic, that means encouraging reporters to adhere, more completely, to their purpose of holding power to account. For different individuals, it might involve engaging with political races, or coordinating protests, or finding ways to defend voting rights.
Less than a year ago, we were in a very different place. Twelve months later? Or three years from now? The truth is, we are uncertain. All we can do is try to persevere.
What’s Giving Me Encouragement Today
The interaction I encounter with students with aspiring reporters, that are simultaneously hopeful and grounded, {always
