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One year ago, the environment was entirely separate. Prior to the US presidential election, reflective residents could recognize the nation's serious imperfections – its inequities and imbalance – but they could still identify it as the US. A democratic nation. A place where legal governance held significance. A nation guided by a respectable and decent public servant, notwithstanding his older age and declining health.

These days, in late October 2025, countless Americans scarcely know the country we inhabit. Persons believed to be undocumented migrants are detained and shoved into transport, at times denied due process. The East Wing of the White House – is being destroyed to build a lavish event space. The leader is persecuting his adversaries or supposed enemies and demanding the justice department surrender a massive sum of public funds. Soldiers with weapons are being sent to US urban areas with deceptive justifications. The military command, relabeled the Defense Ministry, has effectively freed itself of routine media oversight as it spends potentially totaling almost one trillion dollars of taxpayer money. Institutions, law firms, news companies are buckling under the president’s threats, and rich magnates are regarded as aristocracy.

“America, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the globe's top democratic nation, has fallen over the limit toward dictatorship and totalitarianism,” a noted author, commented in August. “Finally, faster than I thought feasible, it occurred here.”

One awakes with fresh terrors. And it's challenging to understand – and agonizing to acknowledge – how deeply lost we have become, and the rapid pace with which it has happened.

Yet, it is known that Trump was duly elected. Despite his highly troubling initial presidency and even after the alerts that came with the knowledge of the conservative plan – even after Trump himself stated openly he intended to rule as a tyrant just on day one – enough Americans selected him instead of his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the current reality may be, it's more daunting to recognize that we’re only three-quarters of a year under this leadership. Where will three more years of this decline leave us? And suppose that period becomes an prolonged era, because there is no one to limit this ruler from opting that a third term is necessary, maybe for national security reasons?

Admittedly, not everything is hopeless. There are legislative votes the coming year that may bring a different governmental control, in case Democrats recapture the Senate or House of Congress. There exist elected officials who are striving to impose some accountability, like Democratic congressmen who are launching an investigation regarding the effort to cash appropriation by federal prosecutors.

And a leadership election in 2028 could initiate our journey to healing just as last year’s election placed us on this unfortunate course.

We see countless citizens marching in public spaces throughout communities, like they performed in the past days during anti-authority protests.

An ex-cabinet member, wrote recently that “the great sleeping giant of the US is stirring”, similar to past after the Communist witch-hunt era in the 1950s or throughout the sixties activism or in the Watergate scandal.

In those instances, the listing ship ultimately corrected itself.

Reich says he knows the indicators of that resurgence and notices it unfolding currently. For proof, he cites the widespread marches, the widespread, cross-party resistance against a personality's dismissal and the almost universal rejection by reporters to accept military mandates they report only what is sanctioned.

“The slumbering entity consistently stays dormant till specific greed turns extremely harmful, some action so disrespectful toward public welfare, specific cruelty so disruptive, that the giant is forced except to rise.”

It's a hopeful perspective, and I appreciate the author's seasoned opinion. Possibly he may prove to be right.

Meanwhile, the big questions endure: will the nation return to normalcy? Can it retrieve its position in the world and its commitment to the rule of law?

Or must we acknowledge that the historical project worked for a while, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?

My cynical mind tells me that the second option is accurate; that everything might be finished. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, convinces me that we must try, through all methods possible.

In my case, working in journalism analysis, that means encouraging reporters to commit, more completely, to their duty of holding power to account. For some people, it might involve engaging with election efforts, or planning demonstrations, or finding ways to protect ballot privileges.

Under twelve months back, we existed in a very different place. Twelve months later? Or after another term? The truth is, we don’t know. Our sole course is try to continue fighting.

What Provides Me Encouragement Today

The contact I encounter with students with aspiring reporters, who are equally idealistic and realistic, {always