The Tragic Change Only 12 Months Has Made in America
In late October 2024, the landscape was completely different. Prior to the national election, considerate residents could acknowledge the country's serious imperfections – its inequities and inequality – but they continued to identify it as the United States. A democracy. A country where the rule of law held significance. A nation led by a honorable and ethical official, even with his elderly years and increasing frailty.
Currently, this autumn, numerous citizens barely recognize the country we reside in. Persons believed to be illegal immigrants are detained and shoved into vehicles, sometimes refused legal rights. The East Wing of the “people’s house” – is being destroyed for a grotesque dance hall. The president is targeting his adversaries or perceived antagonists and demanding legal authorities surrender an enormous amount of public funds. Armed military personnel are dispatched to US urban areas under fabricated reasons. The military command, relabeled the Defense Ministry, has effectively freed itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends potentially totaling close to a trillion USD of taxpayer money. Institutions, legal practices, journalism organizations are yielding due to presidential intimidation, and billionaires are regarded as aristocracy.
“The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the planet's foremost free society, has crossed the limit toward dictatorship and extremism,” a noted author, commented this past summer. “Finally, more quickly than I believed likely, it did happen in this country.”
One awakes amid recent atrocities. It is hard to comprehend – and painful to realize – just how far gone our nation is, and the rapid pace with which it has happened.
Yet, we understand that the leader was legitimately chosen. Even after his profoundly alarming previous administration and even after the alerts associated with the knowledge of Project 2025 – even after the leader directly declared plainly he planned to be a dictator only on the first day – a majority of citizens chose him instead of his Democratic opponent.
Frightening as the present situation is, it's more daunting to realize that we’re only several months under this leadership. Where will an additional three years of this downfall find us? And what if the three years becomes something even longer, because there is nobody to stop this ruler from opting that a third term is necessary, perhaps for security concerns?
Certainly, not everything is hopeless. We will have congressional elections next year that may bring a different governmental control, in case Democrats retake one or both houses of parliament. There are government representatives who are attempting to impose certain responsibility, like lawmakers that are initiating an inquiry into the attempted cash appropriation from the justice department.
And a presidential election in the next cycle could start the path toward restoration precisely as last year’s election set us on this unfortunate course.
There exist numerous residents protesting in the streets of their cities, similar to recent recently at democracy demonstrations.
Robert Reich, wrote recently that “the great sleeping giant of the nation is stirring”, exactly as before post-McCarthyism during the fifties or throughout the Vietnam war protests or throughout the seventies crisis.
In those instances, the tilting vessel finally returned to balance.
He claims he understands the signals of that resurgence and sees it happening currently. As evidence, he references the large-scale demonstrations, the broad, bipartisan pushback regarding a personality's dismissal and the largely united refusal by journalists to sign the defense department’s demands they report only authorized information.
“The slumbering entity perpetually exists inactive before certain corruption grows too toxic, an specific act so offensive of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that it is compelled except to rise.”
It's a positive outlook, and I respect Reich’s experienced view. Perhaps he will be validated.
In the meantime, the big questions endure: can America ever recover? Can it retrieve its position globally and its commitment to legal principles?
Or should we recognize that the national endeavor succeeded temporarily, and then – swiftly, totally – ended?
My negative thoughts tells me that the latter is accurate; that all may indeed be finished. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, tells me that we have to attempt, through all methods we can.
Personally, as a media critic, that involves pushing media professionals to adhere, more completely, to their duty of holding power to account. For others, it may be engaging with political races, or coordinating protests, or discovering methods to defend ballot privileges.
Under twelve months back, we lived in an alternate reality. Twelve months later? Or in several years? The truth is, we don’t know. All we can do is try to not give up.
What Provides Me Hope Now
The contact I encounter with students with new media professionals, that are simultaneously visionary and realistic, {always
