Happy Saturday all. I’m going to have a weekend, and unless something significant happens my next post will be Tuesday morning. I’m headed to one of my happy places today, Nats Park, for what promises to be a beautiful afternoon of baseball. Hope you are getting to spend time in your own happy places this weekend. We all need to rest up, recharge, reboot and get ready to get back at it next week.
As summer is now upon us I wanted to share some thoughts about what I hope to do with Hopium this summer. Feedback is encouraged!
1 - Keep Fighting Trump’s Ruinous Economic Agenda - Will be job one this summer as the reconciliation bill heads to the Senate and the debate continues. Thanks to all of you who have been making your calls and working it. The House vote this week was prep for the even bigger battles ahead.
2 - Keep Working For Our Candidates And State Parties - Winning the New Jersey and Virginia elections this fall is our highest electoral priority. We’ve rallied for Spanberger - thank you all - and will get involved in the NJ Governor’s race when we have a nominee next month. We’ve taken the first early and important step to flip the US House by supporting newly elected Dems in tough races - the Hopium 7. We got Ken Martin off to a good start by raising him $100,000 in his first few weeks as DNC Chair, and raised $150,000 in that all important Supreme Court win in Wisconsin last month.
We will keep supporting our good friends in North Carolina, and be looking for other opportunities to make a difference this summer. I hope to be able to do in person Hopium canvasses in both NJ and VA as we get closer to the election, and perhaps reboot our popular Thursday night postcard and phone banking events that we did last year.
I want to thank all of you who are already writing postcards, canvassing and busting your butts for local candidates, state parties, people’s town halls and all the other ways you are contributing in this challenging time for the nation. It’s amazing to see all the work being done by members of our community in the paid subscriber chat each day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 - Owning The Fourth - I’ll be returning to this important project next week. I see the No Kings rallies on June 14th as a run up to this idea of making sure that the pro-democracy movement owns the July 4th holiday this summer. Together, we need to become seen and understood as patriots, they the betrayers.
4 - New Merch, More Hopium Live Events, Fall Travel - Hopium Merch is coming in June, and expect more Hopium Live events during the week. We are likely to have a live event early in the week each week - Monday or Tuesday - and one on Friday too. I will also continue to do recorded interviews with people driving our politics forward each day.
In addition to our first in person canvasses and get togethers in NJ and VA I hope to start traveling more to do in person events with Hopium members. Some of you have invited me to come visit. Thank you. I want to hit the road some this fall as live, in-person events have not really been a part of the Hopium experience but it is time now for that to change.
5 - Fighting Trump’s Attack On Science, Academia, Knowledge And Our Public Health - I am working on a Hopium project that will allow us to more directly fight this pernicious part of the Trump agenda more forcefully. More on this soon (I hope).
Head to the end of this post for an excerpt from a new and important NYT essay defending Harvard and higher education from Harvard Professor Steven Pinker (gift link). If you have the time this weekend read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
6 - Growing Hopium - I want to set a target of getting to 175,000 subscribers by Labor Day. We are 151,000 strong now. Will need everyone involved in this important summer project. More on this soon.
As part of this campaign I’m extending the current 10% discount on an annual paid Hopium subscription all the way through Labor Day. These paid subscriptions make Hopium possible so if you are thinking of signing up today would be a good day to do it!
7 - Having A Summer - As we discussed in our weekly gathering this week, here at Hopium let’s all commit to having a summer, a real summer and not let this important work we do together overwhelm us. While Trump is taking many things from us we cannot allow him to rob us of joy, of family, of warm summer nights with friends, of getting away. In that vein here’s a photo of a street garden my wife and I planted a few years back. It’s flourishing now…..
I end this Saturday post with a selection of Hopium essays, meditations, interviews and actions if you want to spend some time diving into politics this weekend…..
A New Birth Of Freedom - Re-sending the Gettysburg Address for it just keeps speaking to me this weekend:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
On Trump’s Ruinous Economic Agenda
Other Timely Hopium Fare
Two more things you can do today to channel your outrage, anger and fear for what comes next for this once great nation:
1 - Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Simply, the Virginia elections are the most important elections we have this year, and we must win them. We have narrow majorities in both legislative chambers and while our candidate Abigail Spanberger has a modest lead in current polling, this is going to be a close election where our money and volunteer time can make a real difference. If you are to give to only one candidate or election this year it should be this one. Here’s a link to do so today……
To learn more about Abigail check out my new discussion with her, released yesterday. We have now raised over $107,000 towards our June 30th goal of $200,000 - thank you all. If you want to volunteer for her race head over to her campaign website today. We can do this people!
2 - Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. Catch our interviews with Reps Derek Tran, Janelle Bynum, Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen and give to all 7 through a single donation on our ActBlue page. Learn more about this important effort here.
We’ve already raised over $97,000 towards our $200,000 June 30th goal - can we get to $100,000 today?
An Excerpt From Steven Pinker’s Long Defense Of Harvard and Higher Ed -
University leaders should be prepared to affirm the paramount goal of a university — discovering and transmitting knowledge — and the principles necessary to pursue it. Universities have a mandate and the expertise to pursue knowledge, not social justice. Intellectual freedom is not a privilege of professors but the only way that fallible humans gain knowledge. Disagreements should be negotiated with analysis and argument, not recriminations of bigotry and victimhood. Protests may be used to generate common knowledge of a grievance, but not to shut people up or coerce the university into doing what the protesters want. The university commons belongs to the community, whose members may legitimately disagree with one another, and it may not be usurped by one faction. The endowment is not an op-ed page but a treasure that the university is obligated to hold in trust for future generations.
Why does this matter? For all its foibles, Harvard (together with other universities) has made the world a better place, significantly so. Fifty-two faculty members have won Nobel Prizes, and more than 5,800 patents are held by Harvard. Its researchers invented baking powder, the first organ transplant, the programmable computer, the defibrillator, the syphilis test and oral rehydration therapy (a cheap treatment that has saved tens of millions of lives). They developed the theory of nuclear stability that has saved the world from Armageddon. They invented the golf tee and the catcher’s mask. Harvard spawned “Sesame Street,” The National Lampoon, “The Simpsons,” Microsoft and Facebook.
Ongoing research at Harvard includes methane-tracking satellites, robotic catheters, next-generation batteries and wearable robotics for stroke victims. Federal grants are supporting research on metastasis, tumor suppression, radiation and chemotherapy in children, multidrug-resistant infections, pandemic prevention, dementia, anesthesia, toxin reduction in firefighting and the military, the physiological effects of spaceflight and battlefield wound care. Harvard’s technologists are pushing innovations in quantum computing, A.I., nanomaterials, biomechanics, foldable bridges for the military, hack-resistant computer networks and smart living environments for the elderly. One lab has developed what may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
Practical applications are not the only things that make Harvard precious. It is a phantasmagoria of ideas, a Disneyland of the mind. Learning about my colleagues’ research is a source of endless delight, and when I look at our course catalog, I wish I were 18 again. DNA extracted from human fossils reveals the origin of the Indo-European languages. Grimm’s fairy tales, with their murder, infanticide, cannibalism and incest, reveal our eternal fascination with the morbid. A single network in the brain underlies remembering the past and daydreaming about the future. Nonviolent resistance movements are more successful than violent ones. The ailments of pregnancy come from a Darwinian struggle between mother and fetus. The “Who is like you?” prayer in the Jewish liturgy suggests that the ancient Israelites were ambivalent about their monotheism.
And if you’re still skeptical that universities are worth supporting, consider these questions: Do you think that the number of children who die every year from cancer is just about right? Are you content with your current chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Do you feel our current understanding of which government policies are effective and which ones are wasteful is perfect? Are you happy with the way the climate is going, given our current energy technology?
In his manifesto for progress, “The Beginning of Infinity,” the physicist David Deutsch wrote, “Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge.” To cripple the institutions that acquire and transmit knowledge is a tragic blunder and a crime against future generations.
Rest up everyone, enjoy this long weekend, and see you Tuesday! - Simon
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