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In late October 2024, the environment was entirely distinct. Before the national election, reflective citizens could recognize America's deep flaws – its inequities and inequality – but they could still identify it as the US. A free society. A country where the rule of law held significance. A nation headed by a respectable and ethical public servant, despite his advanced age and increasing frailty.

Currently, in late October 2025, numerous citizens scarcely know the land we inhabit. Persons suspected of being unauthorized foreigners are detained and forced into vans, occasionally denied due process. The left side of the “people’s house” – is undergoing demolition for an obscene event space. The president is harassing his adversaries or perceived antagonists and demanding the justice department hand over an enormous amount of public funds. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched across metropolitan centers with deceptive justifications. The Pentagon, renamed the War Department, has effectively freed itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends possibly reaching nearly $1tn from citizen taxes. Institutions, law firms, media outlets are buckling due to presidential intimidation, and wealthy elites are handled as aristocracy.

“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the globe's top democratic nation, has fallen over the brink into autocracy and totalitarianism,” Garrett Graff, stated this past summer. “Ultimately, faster than I believed likely, it occurred here.”

Every morning starts with fresh terrors. And it's challenging to understand – and painful to realize – just how far gone our nation is, and the speed at which it occurred.

Yet, we know that the leader was properly voted in. Even after his profoundly alarming initial presidency and despite the alerts that came with the awareness of the conservative plan – following Trump himself declared plainly he planned to act as an autocrat just on day one – sufficient voters elected him over his Democratic opponent.

As terrifying as the current reality are, it's more frightening to understand that we are just several months into this presidential term. What will three more years of this decline position us? And if that timeframe turns into something even longer, as there is not anyone to restrain this president from deciding that additional tenure is required, perhaps for national security reasons?

Certainly, all is not lost. There are legislative votes in 2026 which might create a new governmental control, if Democrats retake the Senate or House of Congress. We have public servants who are trying to exert a degree of oversight, for example lawmakers who are initiating an inquiry into the attempted money grab from the justice department.

And a leadership election in 2028 could initiate our journey to recovery exactly as last year’s election put us on this unfortunate course.

We see countless citizens marching in urban areas across municipalities, like they performed in the past days during anti-authority protests.

An ex-cabinet member, wrote recently that “the great sleeping giant of America is rising”, exactly as before after the Communist witch-hunt era during the fifties or throughout anti-war demonstrations or in the Nixon controversy.

In those instances, the listing ship finally returned to balance.

He claims he understands the indicators of that resurgence and sees it happening at present. As support, he references the widespread marches, the broad, cross-party resistance against a television host's removal and the near-unanimous refusal by journalists to accept government requirements they only publish what is sanctioned.

“The dormant force consistently stays asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, an specific act so contemptuous of the common good, some brutality so disruptive, that he is compelled except to rise.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I value his knowledgeable stance. Possibly he may be validated.

At the same time, the crucial issues persist: is the US able to return to normalcy? Can it reclaim its position internationally and its devotion to legal principles?

Or do we need to admit that the 250-year-old experiment succeeded temporarily, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?

My cynical mind tells me that the latter is accurate; that everything could be finished. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, convinces me that we have to attempt, by any means available.

For me, working in journalism analysis, that means encouraging reporters to adhere, more thoroughly, to their mission of overseeing leadership. For others, it could mean working on election efforts, or planning demonstrations, or discovering methods to safeguard voting rights.

Not even one year prior, we existed in a separate situation. In the future? Or three years from now? The truth is, we cannot predict. The only option is to strive to not give up.

What Offers Me Encouragement Today

The contact I experience during teaching with young journalists, who are equally visionary and realistic, {always