🔗 Share this article

In late October 2024, the situation was completely different. Before the American presidential vote, reflective Americans could admit the nation's significant faults – its injustices and disparity – yet they could still identify it as America. A free society. A place where legal governance held significance. A state guided by a honorable and ethical public servant, even with his elderly years and declining health.

Currently, as October 2025 ends, numerous citizens barely recognize the land we inhabit. People alleged as unauthorized foreigners are collected and shoved into vans, at times denied due process. The left side of the White House – is being destroyed to build a lavish ballroom. The leader is targeting his political rivals or supposed enemies and insisting federal prosecutors hand over a massive sum of taxpayer money. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched into American cities with deceptive justifications. The military command, renamed the War Department, has effectively freed itself of regular press examination while it uses possibly reaching close to a trillion USD of taxpayer money. Universities, attorney offices, journalism organizations are submitting due to presidential intimidation, and rich magnates are regarded as nobility.

“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250^th birthday as the globe's top democratic nation, has crossed the limit toward dictatorship and fascism,” a noted author, stated this past summer. “In the end, more quickly than I thought feasible, it transpired in America.”

Every morning starts amid recent atrocities. It is hard to comprehend – and distressing to accept – just how far gone we have become, and how quickly it has happened.

However, it is known that Trump was legitimately chosen. Even after his deeply disturbing previous administration and following the cautions linked to the knowledge of the rightwing blueprint – following Trump himself said publicly he intended to be a dictator just on day one – a majority of citizens elected him over Kamala Harris.

While alarming as the present situation may be, it's more daunting to understand that we have only been several months under this leadership. What will an additional three years of this downfall leave us? And if the three years becomes a more extended duration, as there is nobody to limit this president from opting that another term is required, possibly for national security reasons?

Certainly, all is not lost. There are congressional elections the coming year that could create a new political equilibrium, should Democrats retake the Senate or House of the legislature. We have government representatives who are trying to apply a degree of oversight, like representatives that are launching an investigation into the attempted money grab from the justice department.

And a presidential election in 2028 could start our journey toward restoration just as last year’s election placed us on this disappointing trajectory.

There are millions of Americans marching in urban areas throughout communities, like they performed recently during anti-authority protests.

Robert Reich, commented this week that “the slumbering force of America is rising”, exactly as before following the Red Scare during the fifties or amid the Vietnam war protests or throughout the Nixon controversy.

On those occasions, the listing ship eventually was righted.

The author states he recognizes the indicators of that awakening and notices it unfolding now. As support, he cites the large-scale demonstrations, the widespread, cross-party resistance against a broadcaster's firing and the largely united defiance by media to agree to the defense department’s demands they report only authorized information.

“The slumbering entity perpetually exists dormant before certain corruption turns extremely harmful, an specific act so contemptuous of the common good, specific cruelty so disruptive, that he is forced other than to stir.”

It's a hopeful perspective, and I value his knowledgeable stance. Maybe he’ll turn out correct.

Meanwhile, the big questions endure: is the US able to return to normalcy? Can it retrieve its position internationally and its commitment to legal principles?

Or do we need to admit that the 250-year-old experiment functioned for a period, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?

My pessimistic brain indicates that the second option is true; that everything might be finished. My positive feelings, nevertheless, advises me that we must try, by any means we can.

For me, as an observer of the press, that’s about urging journalists to commit, more thoroughly, to their mission of scrutinizing authority. For different individuals, it could mean working on election efforts, or organizing rallies, or discovering methods to safeguard ballot privileges.

Under twelve months back, we existed in an alternate reality. A year from now? Or three years from now? The fact is, we don’t know. Our sole course is to attempt to not give up.

What Offers Me Optimism Currently

The engagement I encounter during teaching with new media professionals, that are simultaneously hopeful and grounded, {always