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One year ago, the environment was utterly separate. Ahead of the US presidential election, reflective residents could admit the nation's significant faults – its inequities and inequality – but they continued to see it as America. A free society. A place where constitutional order carried weight. A country led by a respectable and ethical leader, even with his older age and growing weakness.

Nowadays, this autumn, many of us scarcely know the nation we live in. Persons suspected of being illegal immigrants are collected and shoved into vehicles, sometimes denied due process. The eastern section of the “people’s house” – is being destroyed to build a lavish event space. Donald Trump is harassing his adversaries or alleged foes and demanding the justice department transfer a huge total of citizen dollars. Uniformed troops are deployed across metropolitan centers under fabricated reasons. The military command, renamed the War Department, has practically freed itself of day-to-day journalistic scrutiny as it spends possibly reaching nearly $1tn in public funds. Universities, attorney offices, news companies are buckling under the president’s threats, and wealthy elites are treated like members of the royal family.

“The US, only a few months ahead of its 250-year mark as the planet's foremost free society, has tipped over the limit into autocracy and totalitarianism,” a noted author, stated this past summer. “Finally, more quickly than I thought feasible, it occurred in America.”

Each day begins with fresh terrors. And it is difficult to grasp – and painful to realize – just how far gone we are, and how quickly it occurred.

However, we know that the leader was legitimately chosen. Following his highly troubling initial presidency and even after the warnings that came with the awareness of the rightwing blueprint – despite the president personally said publicly he would rule as a tyrant just on day one – sufficient voters selected him over the other candidate.

While alarming as today's circumstances is, it’s even scarier to understand that we are just several months into this administration. Where will an additional three years of this decline leave us? And suppose the three years transforms into an prolonged era, because there is not anyone to stop this ruler from deciding that a third term is required, perhaps for security concerns?

Admittedly, not everything is hopeless. We will have midterm elections in 2026 that could establish an alternate governmental control, in case Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress. There exist elected officials who are attempting to impose some accountability, like Democratic congressmen currently launching an investigation into the attempted cash appropriation from the justice department.

And a presidential election in 2028 could initiate our journey toward restoration exactly as last year’s election set us on this unfortunate course.

We see numerous residents marching in the streets of their cities, like they performed in the past days during anti-authority protests.

A former official, stated lately that “the dormant powerhouse of America is rising”, exactly as before following the Red Scare in that decade or throughout anti-war demonstrations or during the Nixon controversy.

In those instances, the listing ship finally returned to balance.

Reich says he knows the signs of that revival and notices it unfolding currently. As evidence, he references the large-scale demonstrations, the broad, cross-party resistance to a personality's dismissal and the almost universal refusal by journalists to accept military mandates they report only what is sanctioned.

“The sleeping giant perpetually exists asleep till specific greed turns extremely harmful, some action so offensive toward public welfare, certain violence so loud, that he is forced but to awaken.”

It's a hopeful perspective, and I value Reich’s experienced view. Maybe he’ll be validated.

At the same time, the big questions persist: is the US able to return to normalcy? Is it possible to restore its standing in the world and its commitment to legal principles?

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

My cynical mind suggests that the latter is true; that all may indeed be finished. My hopeful heart, nevertheless, tells me that we must try, by any means we can.

In my case, as an observer of the press, that involves pushing media professionals to commit, more fully, to their purpose of holding power to account. For some people, it might involve participating in election efforts, or organizing rallies, or developing approaches to safeguard electoral access.

Less than a year ago, we were in an alternate reality. A year from now? Or after another term? The reality is, we don’t know. The only option is to strive to not give up.

What Provides Me Hope Now

The contact I encounter during teaching with young journalists, that are simultaneously idealistic and practical, {always