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One year ago, the environment was entirely distinct. Prior to the US presidential election, considerate Americans could admit America's significant faults – its injustices and disparity – yet they still could see it as America. A free society. A land where constitutional order held significance. A state headed by a honorable and decent public servant, despite his elderly years and declining health.

Nowadays, as October 2025 ends, numerous citizens scarcely know the nation we reside in. Individuals believed to be illegal immigrants are rounded up and shoved into vans, occasionally refused legal rights. The eastern section of the “people’s house” – is being torn down for a grotesque event space. The leader is targeting his opponents or supposed enemies and requesting federal prosecutors transfer a huge total of public funds. Uniformed troops are being sent to US urban areas under fabricated reasons. The Pentagon, relabeled the Defense Ministry, has – in effect – rid itself of routine media oversight as it spends potentially totaling nearly $1tn from citizen taxes. Colleges, attorney offices, media outlets are submitting from leader's menaces, and billionaires are handled as aristocracy.

“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the world’s leading democracy, has crossed the brink toward dictatorship and totalitarianism,” Garrett Graff, wrote in August. “Ultimately, faster than I thought feasible, it did happen in America.”

Each day begins amid recent atrocities. It is hard to comprehend – and agonizing to acknowledge – how severely declined we are, and how quickly it unfolded.

Yet, we understand that the leader was properly voted in. Despite his highly troubling previous administration and despite the warnings associated with the knowledge of the rightwing blueprint – despite Trump himself declared plainly he planned to rule as a tyrant solely at the start – sufficient voters selected him instead of his Democratic opponent.

While alarming as the present situation are, it’s even scarier to realize that we’re only three-quarters of a year into this presidential term. What will another 36 months of this deterioration leave us? And suppose that timeframe becomes an prolonged era, as there is no one to restrain this leader from determining that another term is necessary, maybe for security concerns?

Admittedly, there is still hope. We will have congressional elections the coming year which might bring a different political equilibrium, in case Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress. There are public servants who are striving to exert some accountability, for example Democratic congressmen who are starting a probe regarding the effort to cash appropriation from legal authorities.

And a national vote in the next cycle could begin our journey to healing precisely as the prior selection put us on this regrettable path.

There exist millions of Americans marching in public spaces throughout communities, as they did last weekend during anti-authority protests.

A former official, wrote recently that “the dormant powerhouse of the nation is rising”, exactly as before after the Communist witch-hunt era during the fifties or amid the sixties activism or throughout the Nixon controversy.

During those times, the unstable nation eventually was righted.

Reich says he knows the signals of that resurgence and notices it unfolding now. As support, he references the widespread marches, the widespread, bipartisan pushback to a television host's removal and the largely united refusal by journalists to agree to the defense department’s demands they solely cover approved content.

“The sleeping giant consistently stays inactive until specific greed becomes so noxious, an specific act so offensive toward public welfare, some brutality so loud, that it is forced but to awaken.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I respect his knowledgeable stance. Maybe he’ll prove to be right.

Meanwhile, the big questions persist: can America regain its footing? Can it retrieve its standing globally and its adherence to legal principles?

Or must we acknowledge that the 250-year-old experiment worked for a while, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?

My negative thoughts tells me that the second option is correct; that everything might be gone. My optimistic spirit, however, convinces me that we need to strive, through all methods we can.

Personally, working in journalism analysis, that means pushing media professionals to commit, more thoroughly, to their mission of overseeing leadership. For others, it might involve working on political races, or organizing rallies, or developing approaches to protect voting rights.

Not even one year prior, we existed in a separate situation. A year from now? Or three years from now? The reality is, we cannot predict. Our sole course is to strive to continue fighting.

What Offers Me Encouragement Today

The engagement I encounter in the classroom with young journalists, who are both visionary and grounded, {always