A Heartbreaking Change Just One Year Has Brought in the US
Twelve months back, the landscape was completely different. Prior to the US presidential election, considerate Americans could admit America's deep flaws – its injustices and inequality – yet they continued to see it as America. A democratic nation. A place where legal governance meant something. A nation headed by a honorable and ethical public servant, even with his older age and increasing frailty.
Nowadays, as October 2025 ends, numerous citizens hardly identify the land we reside in. People believed to be undocumented migrants are collected and forced into vehicles, sometimes blocked from fair treatment. The eastern section of the White House – is being torn down to build a lavish dance hall. Donald Trump is targeting his political rivals or alleged foes and insisting legal authorities transfer a massive sum of public funds. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched across metropolitan centers under fabricated reasons. The Pentagon, relabeled the Department of War, has effectively freed itself of regular press examination as it spends possibly reaching almost one trillion dollars in public funds. Universities, attorney offices, media outlets are buckling from leader's menaces, and wealthy elites are treated like aristocracy.
“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the world’s leading democracy, has fallen over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism,” Garrett Graff, wrote this past summer. “In the end, more quickly than I thought feasible, it did happen in America.”
Every morning starts amid recent atrocities. And it is challenging to understand – and distressing to accept – how severely declined we have become, and how quickly it unfolded.
However, it is known that the president was properly voted in. Despite his deeply disturbing previous administration and despite the alerts that came with the knowledge of the conservative plan – following the leader directly declared plainly he would act as an autocrat solely at the start – sufficient voters elected him over his Democratic opponent.
While alarming as today's circumstances is, it's more frightening to understand that we’re only nine months into this administration. What will three more years of this decline leave us? And suppose that timeframe transforms into something even longer, as there is not anyone to stop this leader from determining that another term is required, perhaps for national security reasons?
Granted, not everything is hopeless. We will have congressional elections next year which might establish an alternate political equilibrium, in case Democrats retake one or both houses of the legislature. There exist elected officials who are striving to exert certain responsibility, like Democratic congressmen who are launching an investigation concerning the try to money grab by federal prosecutors.
And a national vote in 2028 could start us down the road to recovery exactly as the prior selection put us on this regrettable path.
There exist countless citizens protesting in urban areas throughout communities, similar to recent recently during anti-authority protests.
Robert Reich, stated lately that “the great sleeping giant of America is rising”, just as it did following the Red Scare during the fifties or amid the Vietnam war protests or in the seventies crisis.
On those occasions, the tilting vessel eventually was righted.
He claims he knows the signs of that revival and sees it happening at present. As evidence, he points to the widespread marches, the extensive, cross-party resistance to a personality's dismissal and the near-unanimous defiance by media to agree to government requirements they solely cover approved content.
“The sleeping giant perpetually exists asleep till some venality becomes so noxious, some action so offensive of societal benefit, certain violence so disruptive, that it is forced other than to stir.”
It's a hopeful perspective, and I value Reich’s experienced view. Possibly he may be validated.
In the meantime, the big questions endure: can America regain its footing? Can it reclaim its status internationally and its commitment to constitutional order?
Or must we acknowledge that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?
My negative thoughts tells me that the latter is true; that everything could be gone. My positive feelings, though, tells me that we need to strive, by any means available.
In my case, as a media critic, that means encouraging reporters to live up, more completely, to their purpose of overseeing leadership. For others, it may be engaging with election efforts, or coordinating protests, or discovering methods to defend voting rights.
Less than a year ago, we lived in a very different place. In the future? Or after another term? The fact is, we don’t know. All we can do is try to not give up.
What Provides Me Optimism Currently
The contact I encounter with students with aspiring reporters, that are simultaneously hopeful and practical, {always
