A Heartbreaking Transformation Just One Year Has Made in the US
One year ago, the environment was entirely distinct. Prior to the American presidential vote, reflective Americans could acknowledge the nation's significant faults – its injustices and inequality – yet they still could see it as the US. A democratic nation. A place where legal governance held significance. A country led by a dignified and decent official, notwithstanding his elderly years and growing weakness.
Nowadays, as October 2025 ends, countless Americans hardly identify the land we inhabit. Persons suspected of being undocumented migrants are rounded up and pushed into transport, sometimes denied due process. The eastern section of the presidential residence – is being destroyed for a grotesque dance hall. The leader is harassing his adversaries or perceived antagonists and insisting legal authorities surrender an enormous amount of citizen dollars. Soldiers with weapons are being sent to US urban areas with deceptive justifications. The defense headquarters, relabeled the War Department, has effectively freed itself of routine media oversight as it spends what could amount to almost one trillion dollars of taxpayer money. Universities, legal practices, journalism organizations are buckling due to presidential intimidation, and billionaires are handled as members of the royal family.
“The US, shortly prior to its 250-year mark as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the limit toward dictatorship and extremism,” Garrett Graff, stated this past summer. “Finally, swifter than I thought feasible, it occurred in America.”
One awakes to new horrors. It is difficult to grasp – and agonizing to acknowledge – how severely declined our nation is, and how quickly it unfolded.
Nevertheless, we know that the president was legitimately chosen. Despite his deeply disturbing first term and following the warnings associated with the awareness of Project 2025 – following Trump himself stated openly he would rule as a tyrant solely at the start – enough Americans chose him over Kamala Harris.
While alarming as the current reality is, it's more daunting to recognize that we are just nine months under this leadership. How will another 36 months of this decline leave us? And suppose that timeframe turns into a more extended duration, because there is not anyone to restrain this president from deciding that additional tenure is necessary, maybe for security concerns?
Certainly, all is not lost. There will be legislative votes the coming year that could bring a different political equilibrium, if Democrats retake the Senate or House of Congress. There are elected officials who are trying to exert certain responsibility, for example Democratic congressmen that are launching an investigation concerning the try to fund seizure by federal prosecutors.
And a leadership election in the next cycle could start us down the road to recovery just as the previous vote set us on this disappointing trajectory.
There exist numerous residents demonstrating in urban areas across municipalities, like they performed in the past days at democracy demonstrations.
A former official, wrote recently that “the dormant powerhouse of the US is awakening”, similar to past post-McCarthyism in the 1950s or during anti-war demonstrations or in the seventies crisis.
On those occasions, the tilting vessel ultimately corrected itself.
The author states he knows the signals of that revival and sees it happening currently. As support, he references the widespread marches, the broad, cross-party resistance against a broadcaster's firing and the largely united rejection by reporters to agree to the defense department’s demands they only publish what is sanctioned.
“The slumbering entity always remains asleep till some venality turns extremely harmful, a particular deed so offensive of societal benefit, some brutality so loud, that the giant is forced except to rise.”
It's a positive outlook, and I appreciate the author's seasoned opinion. Possibly he may prove to be right.
In the meantime, the crucial issues persist: will the nation ever recover? Can it retrieve its position in the world and its commitment to constitutional order?
Or must we acknowledge that the national endeavor succeeded temporarily, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?
My negative thoughts suggests that the second option is correct; that all may indeed be lost. My hopeful heart, though, convinces me that we must try, through all methods available.
In my case, as a media critic, that involves encouraging reporters to commit, more fully, to their purpose of holding power to account. For some people, it might involve participating in congressional campaigns, or coordinating protests, or discovering methods to protect voting rights.
Not even one year prior, we were in a very different place. In the future? Or after another term? The fact is, we cannot predict. The only option is to attempt to not give up.
What’s Giving Me Encouragement Today
The contact I experience in the classroom with young journalists, who are equally visionary and grounded, {always
