A Heartbreaking Change Just One Year Has Made in the US
In late October 2024, the situation was completely separate. Ahead of the American presidential vote, thoughtful Americans could recognize the nation's deep flaws – its inequities and inequality – but they could still see it as America. A free society. A place where constitutional order carried weight. A country guided by a honorable and ethical official, despite his elderly years and increasing frailty.
Currently, as October 2025 ends, countless Americans barely recognize the nation we live in. Persons suspected of being undocumented migrants are rounded up and forced into transport, at times denied due process. The left side of the “people’s house” – is undergoing demolition to build a lavish dance hall. The leader is persecuting his political rivals or alleged foes and requesting the justice department hand over a massive sum of public funds. Armed military personnel are dispatched into American cities on false pretexts. The defense headquarters, relabeled the War Department, has effectively freed itself of routine media oversight while it uses possibly reaching close to a trillion USD of taxpayer money. Colleges, legal practices, media outlets are buckling under the president’s threats, and rich magnates are treated like members of the royal family.
“The United States, shortly prior to its 250th birthday as the globe's top democratic nation, has crossed the edge toward dictatorship and totalitarianism,” a noted author, wrote this past summer. “Finally, more quickly than I thought feasible, it did happen here.”
Each day begins amid recent atrocities. It is difficult to grasp – and distressing to accept – how deeply lost our nation is, and how quickly it unfolded.
Yet, we know that the leader was duly elected. Despite his deeply disturbing initial presidency and following the warnings associated with the awareness of the conservative plan – even after Trump himself said publicly he would be a dictator solely at the start – sufficient voters chose him over his Democratic opponent.
As terrifying as the current reality are, it's more daunting to understand that we are just several months into this administration. Where will another 36 months of this decline leave us? And what if that period transforms into a more extended duration, because there is nobody to limit this president from determining that another term is essential, maybe for defense purposes?
Certainly, there is still hope. We will have midterm elections in 2026 which might bring a different balance of power, if Democrats recapture either chamber of Congress. We have government representatives who are trying to impose certain responsibility, like lawmakers that are starting a probe into the attempted cash appropriation from the justice department.
And a presidential election in 2028 could initiate the path to healing exactly as the previous vote put us on this disappointing trajectory.
There exist countless citizens protesting in urban areas of their cities, as they did in the past days in the No Kings rallies.
Robert Reich, commented this week that “the great sleeping giant of America is rising”, exactly as before following the Red Scare during the fifties or during the sixties activism or during the Watergate scandal.
On those occasions, the listing ship finally returned to balance.
Reich says he knows the signs of that awakening and notices it unfolding currently. For proof, he references the large-scale demonstrations, the broad, multi-faction opposition regarding a personality's dismissal and the near-unanimous refusal by journalists to accept the defense department’s demands they only publish authorized information.
“The slumbering entity perpetually exists inactive before some venality grows too toxic, some action so contemptuous toward public welfare, specific cruelty so loud, that the giant is compelled but to awaken.”
It's a positive outlook, and I appreciate the author's seasoned opinion. Perhaps he will be validated.
In the meantime, the big questions persist: will the nation regain its footing? Can it retrieve its status internationally and its devotion to the rule of law?
Or should we recognize that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?
My negative thoughts suggests that the latter is accurate; that everything could be lost. My hopeful heart, though, advises me that we must try, in whatever ways we can.
For me, working in journalism analysis, that involves pushing media professionals to live up, more fully, to their purpose of overseeing leadership. For some people, it might involve engaging with election efforts, or planning demonstrations, or discovering methods to defend ballot privileges.
Under twelve months back, we lived in a very different place. A year from now? Or three years from now? The reality is, we cannot predict. All we can do is to attempt to continue fighting.
What’s Giving Me Encouragement Today
The interaction I experience in the classroom with young journalists, that are simultaneously idealistic and realistic, {always
