Informed

Reading Time: < 1 minute Novelist and columnist Stephen Marche, author of a provocative essay in The Walrus magazine, called America’s Next Civil War. (Stephen Marche) According to writer Stephen Marche, all signs point to a burgeoning civil war in America.

Between a series of social and political upheavals, a stream of natural disasters, and Donald Trump’s presidential policy of breaking norms, Marche says it’s only a matter of time.

Reading Time: 2 minutes The Native American artist Charlene Holy Bear’s first foray into fashion came four years ago, when she made a last-minute decision to attend the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, a pan-tribal festival also known as “North America’s largest powwow.”

“Everyone gets all dressed up in their traditional regalia,” says Holy Bear, a member of the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux Tribe who is known for her intricate beadwork. “I hadn’t had any time to prepare outfits for us but I wanted my 4-year-old son Justus to look really cool. He had a new pair of slip-on Vans and I suddenly had an idea, looking at the checkerboard design.” Over the course of the three-day road trip to the festival, Holy Bear started hand-beading the kicks and the finished product—a classic skate shoe tricked out with vibrantly intricate traditional Lakota beadwork—now has a waiting list full of street style–obsessed collectors clamoring for a customized pair.

Reading Time: 3 minutes “I do not support Trump,” she wrote. “I must learn from my mistakes and move forward.”

Ok…

And here’s the thing. At that moment, Caitlyn Jenner joined the ranks of privileged white women who are perfectly willing to follow along until Trump’s tyranny affects them. It’s ok until it comes home and for Caitlyn obviously trampling the rights of trans people was her come to Jesus moment.

She was fine with kids in cages.
She was fine with angry hostile racist rhetoric.
She was fine with sabor rattling with other foreign powers and ditching our long-standing foreign allies while palling up to the world’s most dangerous dictators.
She was fine with an alleged rapist supreme court nominee and mocking a sexual assault victim who came forward.

Hell, she was fine with “grab ’em by the pussy”. Maybe that’s because she didn’t have one when he was bragging about grabbing them.

But Transgender rights – she had to finally draw a line.

Reading Time: 3 minutes Obviously body-slamming a reporter (who was trying to ask a question about the ObamaCare repeal vote, by the way) is not the same as blowing them up with a pipe bomb. But it is absolutely beyond the pale of constitutional democracy. Celebrating such acts by the very top of the party elite does not bode well for the future of the GOP and American politics writ large.

Political violence is a thorny enough problem when it’s carried out by underground extremists. But it is a lot more dangerous when it becomes a tactic for a ruling party. If one cannot win free and fair elections, well then violence might serve just as well — and if it works, then there is no way to stop it.

Reading Time: < 1 minute Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.     Confluence Daily is the one place

Reading Time: < 1 minute When fascism starts to feel normal, we’re all in trouble.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Trump will be the keynote speaker at Friday’s event, which will also be attended by his former strategist, Steve Bannon. Other speakers include the founder of anti-Islam group ACT for America and former Trump strategist, Sebastian Gorka.

The anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, labeled as a hate group by the SPLC, has hosted its annual summit since its inception in 2006.

“Values voters have waited eight years for a leader who puts America’s mission first and respects the values that made America into a great nation,” the council’s president Tony Perkins said in a statement reported by The Hill.

Reading Time: 9 minutes Much of the coverage of these events tends to be theatre criticism, or news stories about a single inflammatory line or two, rating Trump’s performance or puzzling over the appeal to his followers. But what the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary, regardless of whether the television cameras are carrying it live. It’s not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs that do get covered, either. It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster.

I listen because I think we are making a mistake by dismissing him, by pretending the words of the most powerful man in the world are meaningless. They do have consequences. They are many, and they are worrisome. In what he says to the world, the President is, as Ed Luce wrote in the Financial Times this week, “creating the space to do things which were recently unthinkable.” It’s not a reality show; it’s real.