🔗 Share this article

In late October 2024, the landscape was entirely different. Prior to the national election, thoughtful residents could acknowledge America's significant faults – its injustices and inequality – however they continued to identify it as the United States. A free society. A land where legal governance carried weight. A nation headed by a dignified and ethical public servant, even with his elderly years and growing weakness.

Nowadays, as October 2025 ends, many of us barely recognize the land we live in. People suspected of being undocumented migrants are detained and shoved into vans, sometimes blocked from fair treatment. The left side of the presidential residence – is being torn down for a grotesque ballroom. Donald Trump is targeting his opponents or supposed enemies and insisting the justice department surrender a massive sum of public funds. Uniformed troops are deployed across metropolitan centers under fabricated reasons. The defense headquarters, renamed the Department of War, has practically rid itself of routine media oversight as it spends what could amount to nearly $1tn from citizen taxes. Institutions, attorney offices, journalism organizations are buckling from leader's menaces, and rich magnates are handled as aristocracy.

“The United States, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the planet's foremost free society, has tipped over the edge toward dictatorship and extremism,” Garrett Graff, commented recently. “Finally, more quickly than I believed likely, it occurred in America.”

One awakes to new horrors. And it's hard to comprehend – and agonizing to acknowledge – just how far gone we have become, and how quickly it has happened.

However, we understand that the leader was duly elected. Despite his profoundly alarming first term and following the warnings associated with the knowledge of the rightwing blueprint – despite the leader directly said publicly he would rule as a tyrant solely at the start – a majority of citizens selected him rather than his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the present situation may be, it’s even scarier to understand that we are just nine months into this administration. How will three more years of this deterioration find us? And suppose that period becomes an prolonged era, since there is no one to stop this ruler from deciding that a third term is necessary, maybe for national security reasons?

Granted, not everything is hopeless. We will have legislative votes next year that may bring a different political equilibrium, if Democrats recapture either chamber of Congress. There are elected officials who are attempting to impose a degree of oversight, like representatives who are starting a probe into the attempted fund seizure by federal prosecutors.

And a national vote in the next cycle could initiate our journey to healing just as the previous vote set us on this disappointing trajectory.

We see countless citizens marching in the streets across municipalities, like they performed last weekend during anti-authority protests.

Robert Reich, commented this week that “the great sleeping giant of the nation is stirring”, similar to past post-McCarthyism in that decade or throughout anti-war demonstrations or during the Nixon controversy.

In those instances, the tilting vessel finally returned to balance.

Reich says he recognizes the signals of that revival and observes it occurring currently. As support, he points to the widespread marches, the extensive, bipartisan pushback regarding a broadcaster's firing and the largely united rejection by reporters to accept military mandates they only publish what is sanctioned.

“The sleeping giant consistently stays inactive until some venality turns extremely harmful, a particular deed so disrespectful of societal benefit, certain violence so loud, that he has no choice but to awaken.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Possibly he may turn out correct.

In the meantime, the big questions endure: will the nation ever recover? Is it possible to restore its standing in the world and its devotion to constitutional order?

Or must we acknowledge that the historical project functioned for a period, and then – swiftly, totally – ended?

My negative thoughts tells me that the latter is accurate; that all may indeed be finished. My optimistic spirit, nevertheless, advises me that we must try, through all methods possible.

For me, as an observer of the press, that’s about pushing media professionals to adhere, more thoroughly, to their mission of holding power to account. For others, it may be working on political races, or coordinating protests, or developing approaches to protect ballot privileges.

Less than a year ago, we were in a separate situation. Twelve months later? Or after another term? The truth is, we don’t know. The only option is to strive to persevere.

What Provides Me Hope Now

The engagement I encounter in the classroom with young journalists, who are equally hopeful and realistic, {always