The vibe ain’t right for a self-congratulatory retrospective on the fourth anniversary of National Zero’s launch. Doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot to celebrate given that after all the countless hours spent covering politics we’re all still in at least one major respect the same place we were on June 25th, 2020: Staring down the barrel of another four years under the rule of a fascist madman who consumes so much goddamned time and attention and it just freaking sucks.

There’s so much symbolism in this photo and some of it even fits in thematically with the following ten paragraphs.

There’s only so outraged the average person can get and yet still the forces of evil persist in their quest to seize power permanently and inflict unimaginable horrors upon you and everything you hold dear – a threat all the more offensive because you were once naive enough to think this shit was all over and that the madness infesting American politics was quarantined. That by now Joe Biden would have retired or was about to and Kamala Harris would have been a strong favorite over Ted Cruz or whichever other dipshit the GOP nominated. That Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema weren’t such cunts and the Dem Congress would have gutted the Supreme Court one way or another as well as ending gerrymandering nationwide. That Merrick Garland would have been more aggressive and Donald Trump would be serving the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of treason, his selling our country out to Vladimir Putin laid out incontrovertibly in black and white at trial.

Sad, right?

Look at how strong and fearless they project him to be with that fascist-y slogan. Sure makes anyone who would dare question his inevitability think twice and piss their pants three times. An absolutely dominant figure who will crush all resistance to his rule when not if he returns to power.

Also he lasted only two minutes while raw-dogging a pornstar as was revealed in testimony during the trial that ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts. Tucker Carlson was not on Fox News to opine about the trial because he was replaced with saggy tit-brained dipshit Jesse Watters. Alex Jones is about to be immolated forever. Kevin McCarthy is lol. Steve Bannon’s about to go to federal prison before he gets out and then in all likelihood goes to a New York State prison for considerably longer. The Epoch Times is a money laundering scheme that will go bankrupt. The Gateway Pundit is actually bankrupt. Rudy Giuliani will die disbarred and penniless in the next few years, possibly while incarcerated. Mike Lindell we almost feel bad for. Almost. George Santos doesn’t really count because nobody knew who he was until 2022 but whatever that was still really goddamned funny.

The point is that time is not a flat circle. The score may be tied at the beginning of the fourth quarter but the other team is nursing some serious injuries to their roster. This is not the time for exhaustion or resignation, it is for that last sprint to win this and put away that one centrifugal threat around which they all orbit. They can be beaten, they have been beaten. That’s all that matters.

The GOP will survive without Trump. There will still be countless hours of entertainment to be had from them if Joe Biden emerges victorious from this final confrontation. That time from 2021 through the first half of 2023 when Trump was mostly just a background character and National Zero’s coverage was more diverse in its flavors of right wing batshittery were some of the finest and most enjoyable hours for us and our readers alike. To return to another such hilariously disarrayed aftermath with our democracy mostly intact would be such a glorious, joyful prize.

It’s within reach. If you’re a American Democrat anxious about November then try being a British conservative or a member of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party in France or Germany’s ruling centrist coalition. They are so utterly fucked, as are most incumbents in Western countries. They all faced the same economic, immigration, and inflationary headwinds that Joe Biden has been hit with and yet he’s heads and shoulders in better shape than them politically.

But don’t look across the pond or back at four years of this site’s very uneven coverage of the story of American politics. Again, we had to mark it somehow but this is not the time for fond reminiscence about our site. This isn’t about National Zero, this is about us in the here and the now, looking ahead to an existential challenge and having the balls to do our part to overcome it.

Let’s make June 25, 2025 dawn on a democracy. That’s when we’ll celebrate and self-congratulate.