Why I'm Launching Unaligned
Most Americans aren’t extremists; they’re exhausted. Unaligned is my plan to move power from the outrage economy to a real majority that solves problems.
Hi, I’m Rebecca. I’m a Marine Corps veteran, a first-generation immigrant, a center-left liberal, and a transgender woman. And I’m tired of watching extremists hijack our democracy while an exhausted majority hopelessly looks on from the sidelines.
That sideline is getting more dangerous by the day. Just yesterday, America witnessed yet another unthinkable act of political violence: the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. He was a prominent ally of Donald Trump, shot dead while speaking at a Utah college event. It's a horrifying escalation, yet – in hindsight – not entirely surprising. This tragedy didn't happen in a vacuum; it's the direct result of a political climate that has become dangerously overheated. If we don't change course, these tensions will keep escalating and may quickly spiral into explosive violence that can no longer be contained.
American politics has devolved into a blood sport between the fringes, even though those fringes represent only a sliver of the population. Most people aren’t bomb-throwing partisans. They're weary. They've tuned out because the endless outrage and polarization feel impossible to escape. The loudest voices may dominate our discourse, but they certainly don't speak for the country as a whole.
My own story doesn't fit neatly into any partisan box, and that's the point. Most people's lives don't. I identify as a Democrat because I care deeply about our founding principles – democracy, freedom and resistance to authoritarianism – and because I believe in defending the rights and dignity of marginalized people. Being part of a marginalized group myself gives me a personal stake in that fight, but I'd be here regardless, because I care about people.
In a healthy political landscape, I'd welcome real debates about ideas. Convince me that Republican tax policy could lift society as a whole. Let's argue about the merits of small versus big government. I believe capitalism is the best economic system we've got – I just think it needs stronger guardrails so that as wealth grows, everyone prospers.
I'm also a gun owner who believes in the Second Amendment and the right to defend ourselves against tyranny. But I also weep for children slaughtered in classrooms. Every time I see yet another school shooting on the news, I hold my son as tightly as I can, trying not to imagine him having to experience such a nightmare. We need a solution that protects both our ability to resist tyranny and our children's right to grow up safe.
But we don't get those debates anymore. Instead, our two major parties are divided on something more fundamental: whether humanity and democracy themselves are up for negotiation. Like most Americans, I'm exhausted by a system where voting means choosing who's least likely to harm me, instead of choosing between leaders who all want to make life better in different ways.
The Unaligned project aims to shift political discourse, action, and power back to the true majority. It's about building an inter-party coalition strong enough to disrupt the calcified two-party system, and bold enough to imagine policies focused on abundance instead of just managing scarcity. Unaligned is data-driven, fiercely independent, and unabashedly human. Political victory in this era doesn't come from robotic and focus-tested talking points. It comes from rejecting those scripts and embracing the messy, imperfect reality of the human condition.
This is where the work begins. I hope you'll join me in building something better.
The Exhausted Majority vs. the Extremes
Research shows that two-thirds of Americans belong to what's often called the "exhausted majority." They're not ideologues. They don't live for the outrage cycle. They're busy working, raising families, and just trying to get through life. If you think this sounds like you – and like most people you know – that's because it is.
Meanwhile, maybe 10-15% of the population – the hyper-partisans on social media and cable news – set the tone for everyone else. They thrive on conflict, so the picture of America that we get is warped: a country that looks hopelessly divided, even though most people actually agree on far more than we realize.
The exhausted majority looks less like Twitter warriors and more like your neighbors: the nurse pulling a double shift, the single mom juggling work and childcare, the dad watching grocery prices climb while his paycheck stays flat. These aren't people with time to wage culture wars. They want to focus on their own lives and trust that their leaders are people who fix problems, not manufacture them.
Both extremes survive by painting caricatures of the other side. To the far left, every conservative is a bigot or would-be dictator. To the far right, every liberal is a communist who wants to legalize crime and tax you into oblivion. These aren't real people – they're cartoon villains drawn to fuel outrage. They're strawmen, manufactured by online grifters and political operatives who've discovered that the business of polarization is a gold mine. For every theocratic fascist at the Heritage Foundation (and now, unfortunately, in our very own government), there are thousands of ordinary people who hold no extremist views whatsoever. The danger is that when we buy into these caricatures, we not only forget that most Americans are simply trying to live decent lives – we also help make the caricatures real, as people feel forced to dig deeper into one camp or the other.
And that's where the dissonance hits me: knowing most Americans aren't extremists, yet still wrestling with the anger I feel toward those who empowered one.
Living the Dissonance
This dissonance isn't abstract for me – it's deeply personal. As a transgender woman in Donald Trump's America, I watched more than $200 million get poured into 2024 campaigns designed to scapegoat one percent of the population. Every day felt – and continues to feel – like a reminder that people like me were cannon fodder, useful only as a punching bag in someone else's war.
For a long time my gut reaction was hatred for anyone who enabled it. If I'm being honest, it still is sometimes. It's hard not to feel that way when your existence is treated as a bargaining chip, or when strangers debate whether you even deserve basic human dignity.
And yet, I can't escape the harder truth: most voters weren't motivated by cruelty. They were responding to pain, fear, or despair. That doesn't excuse the harm. But it complicates the picture. It forces me to wrestle with two realities at once – my lived experience of being targeted, and the recognition that many who pulled the lever for Trump did so out of desperation, not malice.
Because that's the paradox of authoritarianism: it thrives on real suffering while directing the blame toward the wrong targets. I can keep my anger at being scapegoated and still see how millions of people, crushed by economic pressure or disillusioned with politics, were vulnerable to a leader who promised to channel their rage. Authoritarians don't create pain out of thin air – they weaponize the pain that already exists.
What Authoritarians Exploit
Trump isn't an anomaly. He follows a long line of strongmen who gain power by tapping into very real suffering. In America, suffering is the hollowing out of the dream that once defined us. For too many people, the promise of opportunity feels like a cruel joke. Wages stagnate, housing is out of reach, mobility is declining. It doesn't matter which political party you align with. For millions of people in our country, the American dream is effectively dead.
And this is the pattern that history keeps showing us. Hitler rose by preying on Germans devastated by hyperinflation and national humiliation. Mussolini rallied Italians battered by unemployment and chaos. Putin seized power by promising order after the collapse of the Soviet Union left people disoriented and poor. Authoritarians don't invent pain – they weaponize it.
Scarcity is their feast. When people feel they're fighting over scraps, they become more vulnerable to leaders who offer certainty. It's easier to rally people around punishing an enemy than to build a society of abundance. Fear is cheaper than hope. Resentment travels faster than solidarity. And so the promise is always the same, every single time: follow me, and I'll punish them.
In America, "them" shifts depending on the season. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Black activists. "Elites." Whoever can be painted as a threat to the struggling majority. I've lived what it feels like to be cast in that role. The cruelty is the point – but the fuel is despair.
This is how democracies weaken: not through a sudden coup, but through slow erosion, as pain and frustration are redirected into loyalty for a leader who offers simple answers. Once people believe the system is rigged and only a strongman can fix it, democracy stops feeling like a necessity and starts looking like an obstacle. Immigration is too complex, so why bother following the law when deportations get messy? Courts move too slowly, so why not ignore them in the name of "getting things done"? Congress wastes money, so why not gut federal agencies by executive order, even if it's illegal? Each exception is another brick pulled from the foundation of democracy – until one day we look up and realize we've handed absolute power to the executive branch.
And that's where we're heading. America hasn't collapsed into dictatorship, but it also isn't a healthy democracy anymore. We're rapidly sliding toward something more insidious: competitive authoritarianism.
Facing Reality: Competitive Authoritarianism
We need to be blunt: America is no longer a healthy democracy. We are likely becoming (or some might argue we've already become) a competitive authoritarian state. Elections still happen – for now – but the field is tilted, the norms are shattered, and one side is openly willing to break the system to stay in power. We're still early enough to course-correct, but only if we abandon our illusions and the comforting lie that "it could never happen here."
"Competitive authoritarianism" isn't just a political science buzzword. It's a system where elections exist, but the rules are rigged. Gerrymandered districts lock in outcomes before a single ballot is cast. Voter suppression laws surgically target the young and the marginalized. Courts stacked with loyalists rubber-stamp whatever the ruling faction wants. This isn't a functioning democracy. It's democracy on life support.
And the longer it goes on, the weaker the immune system gets. Once people accept rigged rules as normal, the bar for corruption lowers. Once courts are seen as partisan weapons instead of neutral arbiters, faith in the law collapses. Once voters believe the system is irreparably broken, they disengage altogether – and disengagement is the soil in which authoritarianism takes root.
That reality demands a shift in mindset. No more platitudes like "when they go low, we go high." No more fighting fire with strongly worded letters. The MAGA movement does not play by the rules that once kept politics stable. Pretending otherwise isn't noble – it's naïve. And refusing to fight while the other side escalates isn't restraint – it's surrender.
If we're living in a competitive authoritarian system, then survival depends on fighting smarter and harder. On crafting both a human response and a strategic one.
The Two-Pronged Approach
So how do we fight back? By being both human and strategic.
On one side, there's the human approach: empathy, coalition-building, and meeting people where they actually are. Most Americans are exhausted, not extreme, and they need to be welcomed back into the political conversation. That means finding common ground and, as difficult as it can feel, refusing to treat neighbors as enemies.
Sometimes that's as simple as showing up outside the partisan battlefield. Talking about rent that's crushing families, or jobs that don't pay enough. Listening first, sharing stories second. Letting trust grow where feat once lived. I know how hard this is – last election the GOP spent a fortune with the sole purpose of attacking and spreading baseless lies about people in my shoes. But if I can still sit across the table from someone and look for shared ground, you can too.
On the other side, there's the strategic approach: fighting like this is war. Because politically, it is. That means:
Not burning political capital on unwinnable cultural battles. For example, fights like transgender women in sports are designed to drain energy and divide coalitions. As a trans woman myself, conceding ground hurts – even if I generally agree that anyone who has undergone male puberty will generally have an unfair advantage in sports. Fighting on every front weakens you everywhere.
Not chasing every morally righteous fight as once. If you try to solve climate change, healthcare, immigration, policing, and complex geopolitical conflicts all at once, you end up with slogans instead of victories. Prioritization is not betrayal, it's survival.
Not playing purity politics or enforcing ideological tests. A movement that demands everyone use perfect language or have spotless records shrinks itself to irrelevance. Too often, allies are pushed out over a clumsy phrase, an old mistake, or a perceived slight – when their actual intent is to help instead of harm. That kind of gatekeeping doesn't protect people, it isolates them. Coalitions win, purity tests lose.
Matching the opposition's intensity and ruthlessness when it comes to wielding power. The right has mastered the art of judicial capture and voter suppression. Meeting that challenge means learning to use every legal and political lever available – without apology.
None of this means abandoning anyone's rights. It means recognizing that without power, we can't protect anyone's rights. Strategy comes first, because survival comes first. But survival without humanity isn't enough. We need both.
And that's what Unaligned is built on. The conviction that if we fight with both humanity and strategy, we can do more than just survive authoritarianism. We can build something stronger in its place.
From Conflict to Thesis
I've spent years wrestling with my own anger, studying how authoritarians rise, and asking why ordinary people empower them. Out of that struggle, I've built a living thesis. One meant to be debated, refined, and grown into a movement.
That movement is called Unaligned.
I'm launching Unaligned because I refuse to watch democracy collapse without a fight. I love this country too much to surrender it to extremists. We are literally fighting for the soul of our nation – for a future where our disagreements are settled with ballots and debates, not bullets.
This essay is just the beginning. In my next pieces, I'll lay out what Unaligned is, how it works, and who it's for. But the heart of it is simple: America belongs to all of us. Not the loudest fringes, not the authoritarian few. And together, we can take it back.
Unaligned: politics for the majority, not the margins.