When I stepped onto Air Canada Flight 800 to Dublin on Sept. 3, 2025, I stepped away from a country in shambles. I stepped away from federal troops being sent into LA and Chicago, a preliminary release of tens of thousands of Epstein-related documents and whispers of a government shutdown.
For many young Americans, this endless stream of absurd content that dominates the news cycle has led to emotional depletion, compassion fatigue and — most alarmingly — political apathy.
This sustained consumption elicits a sense of normalcy around the current political crisis. As the aphorism goes, when you grow up in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. I have found much the same can be said for my home country.
I had the privilege of studying abroad at Trinity College Dublin, where, for the fall term, I was able to escape the burning house. I naively — and on some account, selfishly — went into the experience looking forward to a break from U.S. politics. Yet during those three-and-a-half months, I found myself frequently engaged in conversations about current affairs back home.
These conversations took place in many of the usual suspect places: in pubs, in my classes, but also in unlikely spaces — in taxis through Google Translate, the bus depot in Dublin, and during a day trip to the Scottish Highlands. Some encounters were more serious than others.
In case you were wondering, J.D. Vance memes and Tiktok edits of Gavin Newsom transcend language barriers.
Across three different coffee shops and two afternoons, I spoke with Trinity students about their perceptions, concerns and observations about the deteriorating political and social conditions of the United States, following the ascendance of the second Trump administration. 
A crowd crosses the Ha’penny Bridge over the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland.
What Goes Around Comes Around
Kay Williams, a third-year Trinity student studying art history and architecture, is the managing online editor at Trinity News, Ireland’s oldest independent student newspaper.
As an expatriate from Irvine, California, she finds herself repeatedly questioned for her perspective on American politics. Despite having no intent of returning to the States post-grad, a decision largely predicated on being disenchanted with America, the availability of welfare programs and better social support in the E.U.
“It’s very disheartening … it’s impossible for people to survive in the U.S.,” Williams said. “Every major city has a housing and stability crisis.”
Williams expressed a genuine interest in American politics on behalf of Irish people, but recognized in both countries a troubling pattern of desensitization and a lack of collective action around the atrocities we are bearing witness to in America.
She noted the abuse of minorities, through derogatory language from the president and abhorrent ICE raids, as specific examples that have been lacking appropriate action.
“We should be nervous, we should be scared … There’s a problem with people feeling emboldened to be bigots,” Williams said, reflecting on Ireland’s own rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment. “Trump’s vitriolic messaging doesn’t just embolden Americans, but those abroad. This is not normal, and we shouldn’t be continuing business as normal.”
Seán Radcliffe, a second-year mathematics and economics major as well as the public relations officer of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement at Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, pointed out a proclivity within Irish media to report on the events of the U.S. as if it were a reality TV show.
“What’s happening with police brutality, immigration … it’s barely being talked about in Irish media,” Radcliffe said. “The rhetoric around it is just ‘oh, that’s just America, hahaha,’ I find it bizarre and potentially very scary.” 
The Long Walk in Galway, Ireland, is popular for its bright buildings along the River Corrib.
New Chances, No Choices
Through the lens of his experience working in Irish electoral politics, when Radcliffe looks at the U.S. electoral system he sees a lack of distinction between the Democrat and Republican parties.
“Everyone in charge is on the same team, but [are] poised as opposing teams,” he said. “Both supporters can argue that the other doesn’t support the working class.”
The American two-party system differs from the Irish electoral system, where single transferable voting allows for the representation of many parties in the Oireachtas (Irish equivalent of the U.S. Congress). Because of this, Radcliffe finds that in Ireland “[the] messaging as a child is ‘you can change things.’ The electoral system is very responsive.”
Throughout fall 2025, two critical campaigns ran concurrently, the Irish presidential race and the New York mayoral race — serving as reflections of each other across the pond. Both left-wing independent candidates, now President Catherine Connolly and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, won by a landslide, defeating their pro-establishment counterparts.
According to Doire Ó Súilleabháin, a fourth-year English literature major at Trinity and frequent contributor to Trinity News and Misc. Magazine, everybody in his circle was delighted by the Mamdani win. He recalls the moment of the election being called and hearing his housemates downstairs chanting victoriously, “he fucking won!”
I asked Radcliffe, who had been involved in President Connolly’s campaign, why he thinks both Connolly and Mamdani were so successful.
According to Radcliffe’s experience, “keeping it personal and keeping it accessible by speaking like a normal human being makes all the difference.” Playing into anti-establishment rhetoric and tapping into their respective cultures conveys to voters that these candidates are people for the people, for the everyday working-class citizens.
As Kay Williams put it, “[Politicians] have to take a stance. Take a stand on what’s going on in the world or you don’t stand for anything.”
The view from a bridge over the River Lee featuring Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork City, Ireland.
Sympathy and Stasis
Entering the program, I held the belief that Americans are, by default, looked down upon and mocked by the rest of the world. However, Ó Súilleabháin puts forth a view with an eye toward sympathy as to what is going on. He worries for his American friends and family in Arizona, and emphasized the severity of the crisis in pointing out that 104 Americans have claimed asylum in Ireland since 2022, a number that has since grown in response to the second Trump administration’s policies, according to The Irish Times.
“People need to give America a bit of a break right now,” Ó Súilleabháin said. “It’s not the proletariat, it’s the regime.”
Deepening the relationship between action and inaction, however, he holds a critical perspective on the state of resistance in the U.S., and wonders what the breaking point is going to be.
“‘No Kings’ is an embarrassment,” he said. “Resistance in America is embarrassing — no civil disobedience, no nothing. The American proletariat is not protesting because they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
When reflecting on the causes he has organized for as a student activist, Seán Radcliffe remorsefully noted that “in the American context, I’d be insular and inactive, I’d feel unable to do anything, because it’s so large,” in comparison to Ireland, an island of about 5.3 million people.
The paralysis Radcliffe alludes to is a familiar one. From the outside, it seems there is a sense of waiting with bated breath, an existential question of “Where does America go from here?” hanging over discussions about the present and future.
The Cliffs of Moher is a UNESCO Global Geopark along the Wild Atlantic Way in Clare County, Ireland, that attracts over one million tourists each year.
The Price of Democracy
When I squarely asked Radcliffe to diagnose the main issue(s) facing the U.S., he laughed lightly and responded without second thought: “oligarchy.”
Upon asking the same question to Ó Súilleabháin, he invoked former President Joe Biden’s 2025 farewell address, in which the outgoing president warned the nation of the growing grip oligarchs will have over the country, referring to the technocrats who were quick to bend their knees and their dollars to the incoming administration.
Ó Súilleabháin expanded on the root problem of money corrupting politics in the U.S., commenting that Citizens United v. FEC, the landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling which deregulated campaign finance restrictions, “is the worst thing to happen to the U.S. in the last 20 years,” as this allows for essentially unlimited spending on candidates.
Consider this once again in the context of Irish politics, in which donations to political candidates by individuals and corporate donors alike are capped at 2,500 euros (equivalent to $2,901.65). Adherence to campaign finance laws are subject to strict scrutiny and federal oversight.
“Anything bought and sold is not a democracy,” Ó Súilleabháin contends.
Both Ó Súilleabháin and Kay Williams remain concerned by the increasing interaction between money and media in the American news landscape, and the ramifications this has for the suppression of free speech and freedom of press. Ó Súilleabháin highlights how Larry Ellison, co-founder and previous CEO of Oracle, is building “a media conglomerate giant about to hold a monopoly on media, current and past,” a fact of particular concern given Ellison’s status as the world’s third-richest man.
The interconnectedness of monied interests with the sources many Americans depend on for their information has profound implications for the future of our freedom of press. Dwelling on this tension, Williams states “I can confidently say that the U.S. no longer has any unbiased media, [they’re] all owned by multibillion-dollar conglomerates, stifling truth and anyone that steps out of line.” 
St. Stephen’s Green is a public park in the heart of Dublin that holds both historical significance for its role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and present significance as a place of respite from the busy streets of Ireland’s capital.
Where We Fit
The picture Williams, Radcliffe and Ó Súilleabháin paints is not a pretty one; a portrait of a nation marred by a desensitized public, electoral politics best characterized by an absence of any meaningful choice, oligarchy and a media ecosystem that represents a threat to the fundamental democratic freedoms of speech and the press.
Tempting as it may be to blindly pedestalize states with well-functioning democracies, it is important to remember that no country nor government, no matter how appealing in comparison, is free from shortcomings or excused from criticism. Implicit in the comments of these fellow students is a caution about complacency — the danger that lies in inaction and getting too comfortable.
Social media activism will only get us so far. Change springs from the boots on the ground, from the people who make the choice of organization over toleration. Look around, the fight is here, the fight is now.
Part of that fight is happening right here, at City on a Hill Press and student newsrooms all over, in California, Ireland, and beyond.
Back at the beginning in my conversation with Williams, she recounted the conclusion of an earlier discussion that was had in Trinity News’ newsroom at the start of the term, similar to one that took place 5,000 miles away at a City on a Hill Press all-staff meeting:
“When student media and general media in the states and abroad [faces] such a hard wave of suppression of journalists, it becomes the responsibility of student journalists everywhere to speak up.”
Many thanks to Kay, Seán, and Doire for their time, insights, and glimpses of brighter times ahead. Please explore some of Trinity’s student media, where you’ll find much of their own work:
