🔗 Share this article

In late October 2024, the environment was completely different. Ahead of the US presidential election, thoughtful Americans could admit the country's significant faults – its inequities and imbalance – but they still could perceive it as America. A democracy. A country where constitutional order meant something. A nation led by a respectable and decent public servant, despite his advanced age and declining health.

These days, as October 2025 ends, many of us hardly identify the country we live in. Individuals alleged as unauthorized foreigners are detained and shoved into vehicles, sometimes denied due process. The East Wing of the White House – is being torn down for a grotesque dance hall. Donald Trump is harassing his adversaries or supposed enemies and insisting federal prosecutors transfer a huge total of citizen dollars. Armed military personnel are deployed into American cities with deceptive justifications. The military command, renamed the Department of War, has – in effect – freed itself of routine media oversight during its expenditure of possibly reaching nearly $1tn in public funds. Colleges, law firms, journalism organizations are yielding due to presidential intimidation, and wealthy elites are treated like members of the royal family.

“The United States, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the globe's top democratic nation, has tipped over the edge into autocracy and fascism,” Garrett Graff, stated this past summer. “Finally, swifter than I believed likely, it did happen in America.”

Every morning starts with fresh terrors. It is challenging to understand – and distressing to accept – how deeply lost our nation is, and the speed at which it has happened.

However, it is known that the leader was legitimately chosen. Following his highly troubling first term and even after the cautions linked to the knowledge of Project 2025 – following the president personally declared plainly he planned to act as an autocrat only on the first day – a majority of citizens elected him over his Democratic opponent.

While alarming as the present situation are, it’s even scarier to realize that we are just three-quarters of a year under this leadership. What will another 36 months of this decline position us? And suppose that period transforms into an prolonged era, since there is nobody to limit this president from deciding that additional tenure is essential, perhaps for security concerns?

Certainly, not everything is hopeless. We will have congressional elections the coming year that could establish an alternate balance of power, in case Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress. There are government representatives who are striving to impose some accountability, such as Democratic congressmen who are starting a probe regarding the effort to money grab by federal prosecutors.

And a presidential election in 2028 could start our journey to healing precisely as last year’s election placed us on this unfortunate course.

There are millions of Americans marching in the streets across municipalities, as they did in the past days during anti-authority protests.

A former official, commented this week that “the slumbering force of the nation is rising”, exactly as before following the Red Scare in that decade or amid the Vietnam war protests or throughout the Nixon controversy.

During those times, the listing ship finally returned to balance.

He claims he knows the signals of that awakening and notices it unfolding currently. As evidence, he points to the large-scale demonstrations, the extensive, bipartisan pushback regarding a personality's dismissal and the largely united rejection by reporters to sign military mandates they report only approved content.

“The slumbering entity consistently stays inactive before certain corruption grows too toxic, an specific act so contemptuous of societal benefit, certain violence so disruptive, that he has no choice except to rise.”

It's a positive outlook, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Maybe he’ll prove to be right.

Meanwhile, the big questions remain: is the US able to return to normalcy? Can it retrieve its standing globally and its devotion to the rule of law?

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

My pessimistic brain tells me that the second option is accurate; that everything could be lost. My hopeful heart, however, tells me that we must try, in whatever ways possible.

Personally, as a media critic, that means pushing media professionals to live up, more fully, to their mission of overseeing leadership. For different individuals, it might involve working on political races, or coordinating protests, or developing approaches to safeguard electoral access.

Under twelve months back, we were in a very different place. Twelve months later? Or in several years? The truth is, we cannot predict. The only option is to strive to not give up.

What Provides Me Optimism Currently

The engagement I experience during teaching with new media professionals, who are equally hopeful and realistic, {always