🔗 Share this article

One year ago, the situation was completely different. Before the American presidential vote, thoughtful Americans could acknowledge the nation's serious imperfections – its injustices and inequality – but they continued to see it as America. A democracy. A country where legal governance carried weight. A nation guided by a dignified and ethical official, despite his older age and declining health.

Nowadays, this autumn, countless Americans hardly identify the land we reside in. Persons suspected of being illegal immigrants are detained and shoved into vans, at times blocked from fair treatment. The East Wing of the presidential residence – is being destroyed to build a lavish event space. Donald Trump is targeting his opponents or supposed enemies and demanding federal prosecutors hand over an enormous amount of taxpayer money. Soldiers with weapons are dispatched across metropolitan centers with deceptive justifications. The Pentagon, renamed the Defense Ministry, has practically liberated itself of regular press examination while it uses potentially totaling nearly $1tn of taxpayer money. Institutions, law firms, news companies are yielding from leader's menaces, and rich magnates are regarded as aristocracy.

“The US, just months before its quarter-millennium anniversary as the world’s leading democracy, has crossed the brink into autocracy and fascism,” Garrett Graff, commented in August. “Finally, faster than I believed likely, it did happen in this country.”

One awakes with fresh terrors. It is hard to comprehend – and distressing to accept – just how far gone our nation is, and how quickly it has happened.

Yet, it is known that the president was duly elected. Despite his profoundly alarming first term and despite the cautions associated with the awareness of the rightwing blueprint – following Trump himself said publicly he planned to rule as a tyrant only on the first day – a majority of citizens elected him over his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the current reality are, it's more frightening to understand that we are just three-quarters of a year into this presidential term. Where will another 36 months of this downfall find us? And suppose that period transforms into a more extended duration, because there is not anyone to restrain this ruler from deciding that additional tenure is necessary, maybe for defense purposes?

Certainly, there is still hope. There are legislative votes next year that may bring a different balance of power, if Democrats recapture one or both houses of the legislature. We have government representatives who are striving to exert some accountability, like representatives that are launching an investigation regarding the effort to cash appropriation from legal authorities.

And a national vote in 2028 could begin us down the road to recovery just as the prior selection placed us on this disappointing trajectory.

There exist countless citizens demonstrating in the streets of their cities, as they did recently during anti-authority protests.

Robert Reich, stated lately that “the great sleeping giant of the nation is stirring”, similar to past post-McCarthyism during the fifties or during the Vietnam war protests or throughout the seventies crisis.

In those instances, the unstable nation finally returned to balance.

The author states he recognizes the signs of that awakening and sees it happening at present. As support, he points to the large-scale demonstrations, the broad, cross-party resistance against a television host's removal and the largely united defiance by media to agree to military mandates they only publish what is sanctioned.

“The slumbering entity always remains asleep till specific greed becomes so noxious, an specific act so contemptuous of societal benefit, specific cruelty so disruptive, that he is forced but to awaken.”

It’s an optimistic take, and I value the author's seasoned opinion. Perhaps he will turn out correct.

Meanwhile, the major inquiries endure: can America ever recover? Is it possible to restore its standing globally and its devotion to legal principles?

Or do we need to admit that the 250-year-old experiment succeeded temporarily, and then – abruptly, completely – collapsed?

My pessimistic brain tells me that the latter is accurate; that everything might be gone. My hopeful heart, though, convinces me that we need to strive, by any means possible.

Personally, as an observer of the press, that involves pushing media professionals to adhere, more completely, to their purpose of holding power to account. For others, it could mean participating in election efforts, or planning demonstrations, or developing approaches to safeguard ballot privileges.

Not even one year prior, we were in a very different place. In the future? Or three years from now? The reality is, we don’t know. All we can do is to attempt to continue fighting.

What’s Giving Me Optimism Currently

The engagement I experience with students with young journalists, who are both visionary and realistic, {always