A Heartbreaking Change Just One Year Has Caused in the US
In late October 2024, the environment was utterly separate. Before the American presidential vote, thoughtful citizens could acknowledge the country's significant faults – its inequities and inequality – yet they continued to see it as the United States. A free society. A land where constitutional order carried weight. A nation guided by a dignified and upright official, notwithstanding his older age and declining health.
Currently, this autumn, many of us barely recognize the nation we inhabit. Individuals alleged as unauthorized foreigners are rounded up and forced into transport, sometimes denied due process. The left side of the presidential residence – is undergoing demolition for a grotesque event space. The leader is harassing his adversaries or supposed enemies and demanding the justice department transfer an enormous amount of public funds. Armed military personnel are deployed into American cities on false pretexts. The Pentagon, relabeled the Defense Ministry, has practically rid itself of routine media oversight while it uses what could amount to almost one trillion dollars from citizen taxes. Institutions, legal practices, news companies are yielding from leader's menaces, and rich magnates are handled as nobility.
“The United States, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge toward dictatorship and fascism,” an American historian, stated in August. “Ultimately, swifter than I thought feasible, it occurred in this country.”
One awakes to new horrors. And it's challenging to understand – and painful to realize – how severely declined we are, and how quickly it unfolded.
Nevertheless, we know that the leader was duly elected. Following his profoundly alarming first term and even after the alerts associated with the awareness of the conservative plan – despite the leader directly declared plainly he planned to rule as a tyrant solely at the start – sufficient voters elected him over the other candidate.
While alarming as the present situation is, it's more frightening to realize that we’re only nine months under this leadership. What will three more years of this decline leave us? And suppose that period turns into something even longer, because there is no one to restrain this leader from determining that another term is essential, possibly for defense purposes?
Certainly, not everything is hopeless. We will have congressional elections the coming year which might create a new political equilibrium, if Democrats recapture either chamber of parliament. There exist elected officials who are attempting to apply a degree of oversight, for example Democratic congressmen that are initiating an inquiry regarding the effort to money grab from the justice department.
And a presidential election in the next cycle could initiate our journey toward restoration just as last year’s election put us on this regrettable path.
We see numerous residents marching in urban areas throughout communities, as they did in the past days during anti-authority protests.
A former official, stated lately that “the slumbering force of America is awakening”, just as it did following the Red Scare in that decade or amid the Vietnam war protests or during the seventies crisis.
On those occasions, the tilting vessel eventually was righted.
The author states he recognizes the indicators of that revival and sees it happening now. As support, he points to the recent massive protests, the extensive, bipartisan pushback against a broadcaster's firing and the largely united defiance by media to agree to military mandates they solely cover approved content.
“The dormant force always remains inactive till certain corruption becomes so noxious, some action so contemptuous of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that the giant is forced but to awaken.”
It's a positive outlook, and I value Reich’s experienced view. Possibly he may turn out correct.
In the meantime, the big questions endure: is the US able to ever recover? Can it reclaim its standing in the world and its devotion to constitutional order?
Or do we need to admit that the national endeavor worked for a while, and then – swiftly, totally – ended?
My negative thoughts tells me that the second option is correct; that everything might be lost. My positive feelings, though, convinces me that we must try, in whatever ways we can.
For me, working in journalism analysis, that involves encouraging reporters to adhere, more thoroughly, to their duty of holding power to account. For different individuals, it might involve working on congressional campaigns, or coordinating protests, or developing approaches to defend electoral access.
Under twelve months back, we were in an alternate reality. A year from now? Or three years from now? The reality is, we don’t know. Our sole course is try to continue fighting.
What’s Giving Me Hope Now
The engagement I encounter during teaching with young journalists, who are equally idealistic and realistic, {always
