Imagine If This Moment Was Not About The Ascent of Authoritarians, But About A New Birth Of Global Freedom. Just Imagine.....

A global fight for freedom and democracy is underway. It is time for the Democratic Party of the United States of America to lead it once again......

Morning all. Last night I came across this video from Iran on Bluesky:

And I started thinking….what if the Iranian regime were to fall? If Zelenskyy were to win in Ukraine, and Putin lose? If the end of Maduro brought democracy to Venezuela not dictatorship? If Orban’s government finally was voted out of power in Hungary later this year? If the Cuban dictatorship were to fall after 67 years in power? If the new Syrian government, having overthrown a family dictatorship that lasted 53 years, was able to successfully bring democracy to the Arab world?

Syrians celebrating the fall of Assad, Dec 2024

If were we were here in America successful in reclaiming our government from the oligarchs and Trump’s escalating authoritarianism? What if this moment became a moment, as Lincoln called it - “a new birth of freedom” - around the world and here at home rather than one of autocratic and oligarchical consolidation? What if we could look back at this year, 2026, ten years from now, not as one where freedom was lost but where it was renewed, restored and regained momentum? Where governments “of the people, by the people, for the people” did not perish from the earth……

Imagine if we were to win and Elon, and Putin, and Trump, and Orban, were to lose? Imagine……

I think this is the future we want. And thus we must start imagining it, and begin building a politics that makes it far more likely.

I don’t know what that politics looks like, exactly. I don’t know what this global pro-democracy movement’s rallying cry is going to be, what symbols will animate our fight or who will lead us. But we’ve seen early pieces of it in the weary but determined eyes of Zelensky, of the grace and courage of Maria Corina Machado, of the beauty of the new Syrian currency unveiled this week…..

of the brave women in Iran throwing off their head scarves and challenging one of the most oppressive regimes in modern history…..

And we’ve seen it here in the US with our No Kings movement, in our vital electoral wins in 2025, in the emergence of a new pro-democracy media ecosystem, in the rise of new and powerful patriotic leaders here, of the success of the 23 Democratic AGs, of the courage of judges across the US, and now in a new movement spawning to combat the Trump’s out of control paramilitaries…….

The world is deeply unsettled now. We don’t know how all this is going to turn out. We could lose, or we could win. But we will not win unless we understand the nature of the conflict we now find ourselves in, and organize ourselves to win it.

To do this our Democratic leaders and all of us must far more consciously see themselves not just as legislators or party leaders or grassroots activists but as actors in a global battle for freedom and democracy. We must come to see ourselves as heirs to the American Revolution and the Post WWII Four Freedoms global system that made freedom - not dominion - the founding organizing principle of our country and the world, and recognize that it is our obligation, our responsibility, to lead this global fight - as we have for 250 years. We must be warriors for the middle class and working people, AND proud American patriots fighting for freedom and democracy here and everywhere - for our Founders declared that our inalienable fights included not just the “pursuit of happiness” but “life” and “liberty” too. And we must summon the power of those great American patriots who came before - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Dr. King - and other global freedom fighters - Churchill, Gandhi, Mandela - to inspire us in the years to come.

For we are Americans, and fighting for freedom and democracy is who we are. It is what we do. That is the job history has given us, and it is one now we must now go do - together.

I don’t know what this global pro-democracy movement will look like. But we will need to find ways to network, work together, learn from one each other in the years ahead for we will be much stronger together than alone. We will need to build new institutions and capacities, be far more purposeful about winning the daily global info war waging in the English language across the world, create new and vital global networks, free American states and cities will have to find ways to band together more successfully, and we will need to accelerate the development of a new generation of leaders comfortable fighting in today’s political and information battlefields, not yesterday’s……for we are in a new day. And it isn’t so much older people who are standing in our way, it is old understandings, and the false comfort that things will return to the way they were; that there is an easy road, and not only hard ones; and that we must come to accept that the best way out is always through and just have to get on with it……

It is a time for courage, ambition, imagination, patriotism, and a time to reject those who market their cowardice as pragmatism.

FDR Memorial, Washington DC (SR photo)

We are a year into Trump the return and we know who he is. We understand now. The shock and awe, the surprise, is over. We know who he is. It is time the Democratic Party of the United States of America, heirs to the American Revolution and the Four Freedoms, showed the American people and the people of the world who we are.

Are you with me brothers and sisters?

Now, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The Midterms - Support Our Candidates

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $61,900 raised, $250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)

• Winning Ohio - $6,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! | Watch my conversation with David Pepper, who does an overview of the opportunities we have in Ohio this year

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $64k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversations with Gov. Cooper and NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $110k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $267,000 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas. Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties

This recent post recapped our our very productive year together in 2025. In three new essays (here, here, here) I discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land.

The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.

Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy - We have two recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:

1. Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender

2. Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law, and the US must withdraw from Venezuela and cease other threats to violate the UN Charter and the sovereignty of other nations

3. Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse these cuts to the wealthy and corporations

4. Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties by blocking the expansion of ICE; restoring due process for immigrants across the country; vigorously defending the 1st Amendment; warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents; ending the use of the military on our streets and the dangerous occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented regime corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress end the rancid cover up of the Epstein crimes.

5. Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; support and co-sponsor the Stand Up For Science/Rep. Haley Stevens effort to remove Robert Kennedy from HHS.

2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - This July 4th America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his.

One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next year.

Finally, please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder!

Keep working hard everyone, and I remain so incredibly proud to be in this righteous fight with all of you - Simon