Democrats: Join Trans People or Die

I know, I know. The title may be a bit sensationalist, but at least let me get my thesis off before you click away.

The past week or so has been hard to comprehend. It began with the visceral and senseless public assassination of Charlie Kirk, a spectacle made magnitudes worse thanks to the modern digital panopticon we live in nowadays. When it happened, my coworker came up to me and– without any warning– just showed me the video. My stomach dropped and my brain was scrambled for the rest of the day. Public executions like this are absolutely unacceptable and speak towards a breakdown in the social contract, but I digress.

Then came the news. First, the shooter was supposedly trans. The right-wing machine on X and Fox News immediately used this pretense to justify an all-out "war" with the left, whatever that entails. CCTV photos were released the next day which squandered this premise, and we got crickets from the same people. Then, the bullets were trans, a rumor supposedly created by Stephen Crowder– the host of America's now #1 conservative daily show– and which was quickly disproven by many internet detectives and Kash Patel's FBI. Now, the shooter's roommate was supposedly trans, and the machine is using the existence of a totally separate and innocent person to try and justify their war rhetoric.

To my fellow democrats: Don't you see it? The mental gymnastics that they're using to warrant their attacks against the marginalized group of the week? It's reprehensible. But, in my opinion, it's just as reprehensible as the apathy I see coming from some of us towards this issue.

I see more liberals coming out defending the "civility" of a vitriolic racist than people coming out in defense of our own. Placing the obvious aligned class interest argument aside... Why? The Democrats are supposed to be this big-tent party, accepting everyone who believes in progress and democracy, and lately it feels like we're more willing to accept the grifters and cast out the believers.

At the bare minimum: To be a Democrat does not mean you're supposed to become trans or even understand the trans community. To be a Democrat is to stand against hate of all kinds, and it seems like many of our compatriots have gotten so enthralled in the modern political team sports that they've forgotten this core principle.

Our middle to upper class is doing all of this performative(?) solidarity to try and satiate the right-wing machine, but it seems futile. In case you've been under a rock for few decades, let me bring you up to speed:

For as long as I've been politically active, I've seen Fox News spread conservative vitriol throughout the country, brainwashing millions of Americans to believe whatever baseless narrative they chose to cover that evening. This has been aided and abetted by social media & podcasts with conservative influencers like Kirk, Crowder, or Shapiro repeating these points and really driving them home. Politicians are spineless, running with whatever game plan the hivemind chooses that day.

This multi-front assault on the general discourse has created a misinformation ouroboros, where hate and fear inspire outlandish made-up situations accepted as fact, which then justifies political violence, which then creates more hate and fear. For years, this beast has grown, and grown, and grown, slowly eroding the public sanity, only accelerated by the Trump Administration and Elon Musk's X acquisition. We're seeing unprecedented levels of internal political violence for this country, with the sensationalism of ICE & deportations, attacks on human rights, and even the threat of invading our own cities for... crime or something?

The beast dominates so much of the general discourse to the point where it's now affecting the rights of just about everyone. The fundamental first amendment is now under brazen attack, where conservative pundits can call for war or to straight up kill people on national TV with little to no push-back, meanwhile even pointing out how divisive Kirk was is enough grounds to get you fired. The right are compiling lists of every person who criticized Kirk in the wake of last week, in some new age McCarthyism revival. (There's a joke in there somewhere about cancel culture too, but I'm too lazy to make it.)

Where does it end? My answer: It doesn't, unless we do something about it.

I'm not about to devolve into some tirade about how the democrats need their own media machine because fact of the matter is: they've tried it. They've been paying influencers to parrot points for years now and it's been one of their worst investments, failing to do any meaningful outreach and only serving to boost the egos of suburban "resist" liberals. Progressive influencers with actual bases who want to help the party, like Hasan Piker, are kicked out from the DNC. If the product itself is shit, the marketing can only do so much.

We need to stop capitulating. They will continue to make up stuff to get mad at, blame it on us, and each time their demands are going to become more reckless and insane. Again, look at the stretches they're taking to try and pin the Kirk shooting this on the trans community. I don't buy it.

I'm reminded of a political cartoon from the founding of this country, widely attributed to the grandfather of the country, Benjamin Franklin. In it, a snake is drawn, cut into eight pieces. (As if this post didn't have enough scale-clad parallels already.) The label at the bottom: "Join, or Die." It's one of the most famous comics from the revolutionary war era, used by American colonists to try and convince everyone to put differences aside and unite in opposition of the British Empire.

I can't help but feel that the Democrats are now faced with their own join or die moment. We're cutting ourselves up into a million tiny pieces and deciding which one to feed to the machine each week. The ouroboros will keep growing; if we keep feeding it, it'll only grow faster.

Now is the time for unity with everyone. I don't give a shit if you like them or not, the opposition we're up against is monumental, and it's going to take a national collective to counter it. From bottom to top, we need to call the right out on their delusions. We need to humanize their victims. We need to counter their rhetoric at every thanksgiving dinner table across the country. And most importantly, we need to be able to criticize ourselves in order to make this happen.

The general election is a joke, but the real fight of the primary begins soon. As a party, we need to come together and promote a candidate with unwavering morals who will stand for all of us, not just some of us. Across trans rights, reproductive rights, Gaza, homelessness, and more. Only with a true big-tent front will we have the power to tackle our future head on. Zohran Mamdani's campaign is the light in the darkness that reassures me that campaigns like this are possible, we just need to try.

Apathy allowed the right to profit off of divisive rhetoric for decades and look where that led us. They're so high off their hatred/conspiracy ouroboros that they're now calling for persecution of half the country. Where does it go from here? We must offer a better solution.

— azure 🍢🐬 (@azureagst.dev) Sep 10, 2025 at 8:59 PM

There comes a point where it's hard to stay silent anymore, and I think I've reached it. I stand with my trans compatriots, and I'm not afraid to go on the record for it. I pray you will too. Regardless, the stakes have been set.

Join, or die.