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In late October 2024, the environment was utterly separate. Ahead of the national election, considerate citizens could recognize the country's significant faults – its inequities and disparity – but they could still see it as the United States. A free society. A country where legal governance meant something. A state led by a respectable and decent public servant, notwithstanding his older age and declining health.

Currently, as October 2025 ends, many of us barely recognize the country we live in. Individuals believed to be undocumented migrants are collected and shoved into transport, sometimes refused legal rights. The East Wing of the White House – is being destroyed for an obscene dance hall. Donald Trump is persecuting his opponents or supposed enemies and requesting the justice department hand over a massive sum of citizen dollars. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched to US urban areas with deceptive justifications. The military command, relabeled the War Department, has practically rid itself of routine media oversight during its expenditure of potentially totaling almost one trillion dollars in public funds. Universities, attorney offices, journalism organizations are submitting due to presidential intimidation, and billionaires are treated like nobility.

“America, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the planet's foremost free society, has fallen over the edge toward dictatorship and totalitarianism,” a noted author, stated recently. “In the end, swifter than I believed likely, it did happen in America.”

Each day begins with fresh terrors. It is challenging to understand – and distressing to accept – how severely declined our nation is, and how quickly it unfolded.

However, we understand that the president was properly voted in. Following his profoundly alarming first term and following the alerts linked to the understanding of Project 2025 – following Trump himself declared plainly he planned to rule as a tyrant just on day one – sufficient voters selected him instead of the other candidate.

While alarming as the present situation is, it’s even scarier to recognize that we have only been nine months under this leadership. How will three more years of this deterioration position us? And suppose that period transforms into something even longer, as there is not anyone to stop this ruler from opting that additional tenure is necessary, perhaps for security concerns?

Admittedly, there is still hope. There will be midterm elections next year which might bring a different political equilibrium, should Democrats retake either chamber of parliament. There are public servants who are attempting to exert a degree of oversight, like lawmakers currently starting a probe into the attempted cash appropriation from legal authorities.

And a leadership election in 2028 could initiate us down the road toward restoration precisely as the prior selection set us on this unfortunate course.

We see countless citizens protesting in urban areas throughout communities, like they performed last weekend in the No Kings rallies.

An ex-cabinet member, wrote recently that “the slumbering force of America is rising”, just as it did post-McCarthyism during the fifties or during anti-war demonstrations or throughout the Watergate scandal.

During those times, the tilting vessel finally returned to balance.

Reich says he understands the signs of that resurgence and notices it unfolding currently. For proof, he cites the recent massive protests, the broad, cross-party resistance against a television host's removal and the near-unanimous defiance by media to agree to the defense department’s demands they solely cover approved content.

“The slumbering entity always remains asleep till specific greed grows too toxic, a particular deed so offensive of societal benefit, specific cruelty so disruptive, that the giant has no choice other than to stir.”

It's a positive outlook, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Possibly he may be validated.

In the meantime, the major inquiries endure: will the nation regain its footing? Is it possible to restore its status globally and its adherence to legal principles?

Or must we acknowledge that the historical project succeeded temporarily, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?

My negative thoughts tells me that the second option is true; that all may indeed be finished. My hopeful heart, however, advises me that we must try, by any means available.

For me, as an observer of the press, that means pushing media professionals to live up, more fully, to their purpose of overseeing leadership. For different individuals, it could mean participating in congressional campaigns, or coordinating protests, or finding ways to defend voting rights.

Not even one year prior, we lived in an alternate reality. In the future? Or after another term? The reality is, we cannot predict. All we can do is to attempt to continue fighting.

What’s Giving Me Optimism Currently

The interaction I encounter during teaching with new media professionals, who are both idealistic and practical, {always