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Twelve months back, the situation was completely separate. Prior to the US presidential election, considerate Americans could admit the nation's significant faults – its injustices and disparity – but they still could perceive it as America. A free society. A country where constitutional order held significance. A nation guided by a respectable and upright leader, despite his advanced age and growing weakness.

Nowadays, as October 2025 ends, countless Americans barely recognize the land we inhabit. People suspected of being illegal immigrants are collected and forced into vans, at times refused legal rights. The East Wing of the White House – is being torn down for an obscene event space. The leader is persecuting his political rivals or perceived antagonists and demanding legal authorities surrender a huge total of public funds. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched across metropolitan centers on false pretexts. The defense headquarters, renamed the Defense Ministry, has effectively freed itself of regular press examination while it uses potentially totaling almost one trillion dollars in public funds. Universities, legal practices, news companies are yielding from leader's menaces, and rich magnates are handled as aristocracy.

“The US, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the planet's foremost free society, has crossed the edge toward dictatorship and extremism,” an American historian, wrote in August. “In the end, more quickly than I imagined possible, it transpired in America.”

One awakes to new horrors. And it's hard to comprehend – and agonizing to acknowledge – just how far gone we have become, and how quickly it unfolded.

Yet, it is known that the leader was duly elected. Following his highly troubling first term and following the alerts that came with the knowledge of the rightwing blueprint – even after the leader directly said publicly he would act as an autocrat just on day one – a majority of citizens elected him rather than the other candidate.

While alarming as the present situation may be, it’s even scarier to understand that we have only been three-quarters of a year into this administration. How will three more years of this downfall find us? And what if that timeframe turns into something even longer, because there is no one to restrain this president from deciding that a third term is necessary, perhaps for defense purposes?

Certainly, not everything is hopeless. There are congressional elections the coming year that could bring a different governmental control, if Democrats recapture the Senate or House of the legislature. We have government representatives who are attempting to impose certain responsibility, like Democratic congressmen that are starting a probe into the attempted cash appropriation from legal authorities.

And a leadership election in the next cycle could start the path to recovery just as last year’s election placed us on this disappointing trajectory.

We see countless citizens protesting in public spaces across municipalities, as they did last weekend at democracy demonstrations.

An ex-cabinet member, stated lately that “the slumbering force of the nation is awakening”, similar to past after the Communist witch-hunt era in the 1950s or amid the sixties activism or throughout the Watergate scandal.

On those occasions, the unstable nation finally returned to balance.

He claims he understands the signals of that resurgence and sees it happening currently. As support, he references the widespread marches, the widespread, multi-faction opposition against a broadcaster's firing and the almost universal rejection by reporters to sign the defense department’s demands they report only approved content.

“The slumbering entity always remains dormant till certain corruption grows too toxic, an specific act so disrespectful toward public welfare, some brutality so disruptive, that the giant is forced other than to stir.”

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

In the meantime, the big questions endure: is the US able to return to normalcy? Can it reclaim its standing internationally and its commitment to constitutional order?

Or should we recognize that the 250-year-old experiment succeeded temporarily, and then – suddenly, utterly – failed?

My pessimistic brain tells me that the latter is accurate; that everything could be gone. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, convinces me that we must try, by any means possible.

In my case, as an observer of the press, that’s about pushing media professionals to adhere, more thoroughly, to their purpose of holding power to account. For others, it might involve engaging with congressional campaigns, or coordinating protests, or developing approaches to protect electoral access.

Not even one year prior, we existed in a very different place. In the future? Or in several years? The reality is, we cannot predict. All we can do is to strive to not give up.

What Provides Me Optimism Currently

The interaction I experience with students with young journalists, who are both visionary and grounded, {always