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One year ago, the environment was entirely separate. Before the US presidential election, considerate residents could admit the country's deep flaws – its inequities and disparity – but they could still identify it as the US. A democracy. A land where legal governance meant something. A state led by a respectable and decent leader, despite his older age and increasing frailty.

Currently, as October 2025 ends, numerous citizens barely recognize the country we inhabit. Persons alleged as undocumented migrants are collected and shoved into vehicles, at times denied due process. The East Wing of the presidential residence – is undergoing demolition for a grotesque event space. The leader is targeting his adversaries or alleged foes and insisting the justice department hand over an enormous amount of citizen dollars. Armed military personnel are dispatched to US urban areas under fabricated reasons. The defense headquarters, renamed the Defense Ministry, has – in effect – liberated itself of routine media oversight during its expenditure of what could amount to almost one trillion dollars from citizen taxes. Universities, law firms, news companies are submitting from leader's menaces, and wealthy elites are regarded as nobility.

“The United States, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the planet's foremost free society, has crossed the limit toward dictatorship and extremism,” a noted author, commented in August. “Ultimately, more quickly than I imagined possible, it transpired in America.”

Each day begins to new horrors. It is challenging to understand – and distressing to accept – how severely declined we have become, and the speed at which it has happened.

Yet, it is known that the president was properly voted in. Despite his highly troubling first term and following the warnings associated with the awareness of the conservative plan – following the leader directly declared plainly he intended to rule as a tyrant only on the first day – enough Americans chose him instead of his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the current reality is, it’s even scarier to realize that we’re only several months under this leadership. What will three more years of this decline leave us? And suppose the three years turns into an prolonged era, because there is not anyone to stop this leader from determining that additional tenure is necessary, perhaps for defense purposes?

Granted, not everything is hopeless. There will be legislative votes the coming year that may create a new political equilibrium, in case Democrats retake the Senate or House of parliament. There are government representatives who are attempting to impose a degree of oversight, such as Democratic congressmen who are launching an investigation regarding the effort to fund seizure by federal prosecutors.

And a national vote in the next cycle could start the path to healing precisely as the prior selection placed us on this disappointing trajectory.

We see numerous residents marching in the streets throughout communities, as they did recently at democracy demonstrations.

Robert Reich, commented this week that “the dormant powerhouse of the nation is rising”, just as it did post-McCarthyism in the 1950s or amid anti-war demonstrations or in the seventies crisis.

On those occasions, the tilting vessel eventually was righted.

He claims he recognizes the indicators of that resurgence and notices it unfolding now. For proof, he cites the recent massive protests, the broad, cross-party resistance against a television host's removal and the largely united refusal by journalists to agree to the defense department’s demands they solely cover authorized information.

“The sleeping giant consistently stays dormant until specific greed grows too toxic, a particular deed so contemptuous of the common good, some brutality so loud, that it is compelled but to awaken.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Maybe he’ll be validated.

Meanwhile, the crucial issues endure: can America return to normalcy? Can it retrieve its status globally and its adherence to legal principles?

Or must we acknowledge that the 250-year-old experiment succeeded temporarily, and then – swiftly, totally – ended?

My negative thoughts tells me that the latter is true; that all may indeed be gone. My positive feelings, though, advises me that we have to attempt, by any means possible.

In my case, as a media critic, that’s about urging journalists to commit, more thoroughly, to their mission of holding power to account. For different individuals, it may be working on congressional campaigns, or coordinating protests, or finding ways to protect electoral access.

Less than a year ago, we were in an alternate reality. Twelve months later? Or after another term? The reality is, we cannot predict. The only option is to strive to persevere.

What’s Giving Me Encouragement Today

The interaction I encounter during teaching with new media professionals, who are both hopeful and realistic, {always