Chronicles of American Politics: The Posters of the Chamomile Tea Party 2010-2020

After it was reported that the Trump Administration had lost over 1400 immigrant children, the practice came under intense scrutiny. At the order of the Trump Administration, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had separated them from their parents at our border with Mexico. The president's "zero tolerance" policy against undocumented immigrants led to a huge increase in migrant incarcerations under deplorable conditions. In March 2018, the ACLU sued the government, stating the forced separation of children from their parents while they wait for asylum hearings "violates the Process Clause and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)."

Pediatrician Colleen Kraft wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Studies overwhelmingly demonstrate the irreparable harm caused by breaking up families. Prolonged exposure to highly stressful situations, known as toxic stress, can disrupt a child's brain architecture and affect his or her short- and long-term health."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House chief-of-staff John Kelly defended the practice. Sessions stated, "If people don't want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them." Kelly was even more cavalier: "The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever."

On June 20, 2018, under pressure from his own party, President Trump rescinded this "zero tolerance" policy. But, as of the beginning of 2020, children were still being separated from their parents.

In July 2018, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on his nomination were political drama not seen in at least a generation—and perhaps never imbued with such emotion and vitriol. It was the perfect storm for the partisan clash between the left and the right and between women and men. The #metoo movement stripped away any pretense that we treat women and men equally. Kavanaugh's emotional accusations and the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, his sexual assault accuser, exposed this fracture in ways that shocked and riveted the country.

The attitudes of older male Republican senators magnified the problem. Many have become anachronisms. It's not just their age. Conservatives often feel more comfortable with tradition—the way things always have been. While acknowledging a woman's place might now include working outside the home, twenty-first century cultural and religious fundamentalists have made it clear that patriarchy is still their rule of law.

Knowing how entrenched gender and racial inequality is in our society, this event shouldn’t have been surprising. But it was, given how quickly it exploded. A woman and a man, speaking one after the other, during one day on Capitol Hill.

Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin called the GOP "mean spirited, nasty, and cruel." This is not the party she joined decades ago, one that believed in “free trade, robust immigration, a values-based leadership, respect for facts, a certain dignity, a certain humility, [and] a certain style of governance,” she said on MSNBC in October 2018.

The Republican Party has tried repeatedly to take away Americans' health care by gutting the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). They have voted many times to eliminate protections for those with pre-existing conditions. But, suddenly, with only three weeks before the 2018 midterms, they did a complete turnaround, saying they would protect those with these conditions from losing their insurance. As of 2020, they have not backed up their assurances with legislation.

The 2017 GOP tax cut gave large deductions to the rich and corporations (as recently as the 2020 Republican National Convention, they still refer to it as a "middle-class tax cut"). The party knew this tax revenue reduction would increase the deficit, yet they ignored what had become a signature tenet of the party and voted for the tax cut anyway. As of the end of the 2018 fiscal year, the deficit rose to $21.7B, a 17% rise since Trump took office. Trump promised to eliminate that deficit within eight years. This will not happen.

Because of this ballooning deficit, Republicans believe they must reduce so-called entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Only the middle class and poor will suffer from their plan.

Our nation is becoming younger and more multi-ethnic. But Republicans’ base centers on older Whites. So, what's the GOP to do? Rather than change with the times, they place barriers to voting to counteract their dwindling base. And they have used different strategies in states where they control the legislatures. In 2020, when the Democrats wanted to help states to conduct secure mail-in voting, Donald Trump said, "[The Democrats] had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again." Twenty-five states have enacted laws restricting voting.

Georgia has allegedly purged over 50,000 voters because their registration forms didn't precisely match the information in state databases. African Americans make up 32% of the state’s population, but they represent nearly 70% of the suspended applications.

Both the Republicans and Democrats have used Gerrymandering, one of the oldest forms of voter suppression, to reduce the power of voters. By cracking (diluting the power of opposition voters by scattering them throughout many districts) and packing (isolating opposition voters in one district), states can manipulate the vote. Since, in most states, laws task legislatures with setting these districts, the party that holds the majority has the power to swing the vote.

Some states now have non-partisan committees which draw congressional boundaries. But until laws change to make it easy to vote (many states allow same-day registration on election day) and Gerrymandering is banned, voter suppression will continue to be rampant in American elections.

The 2018 midterm elections were the first significant test for Donald Trump, the GOP, and their policies. This election set a record for the highest voter turnout in a midterm since 1914. Voters rejected the Republicans' direction by returning the Democrats to the majority in the House of Representatives, while the Senate remained in Republican control. With Democrats in control of the House, the GOP no longer controlled all of Congress and the Executive Branch. And they no longer had carte blanche to ignore investigations into Russian meddling in our 2016 elections and the president's use of his office for personal gain.

Donald Trump's signature campaign promise was to build a wall along our border with Mexico, paid for by the Mexican government. That never came to pass, and now American taxpayers are paying for it. In December 2018, an impasse between Congress and the President over his request for $5.7 billion to build his wall led to a partial government shutdown for 35 days, the most prolonged federal worker stoppage in history. Over 800,000 federal workers worked without pay or were furloughed. His administration underestimated the effects of a long-term shutdown and scrambled to find funds for tax refunds and food stamps.

Trump's stance was wildly uneven. First stating he would take the blame for any shutdown, he later blamed the Democrats. Then he said he would sign a short-term government funding bill without money for his wall, only to retract his promise under pressure from conservative hardliners. Disinformation was prevalent. Fox News' Chris Wallace questioned Press Secretary Sarah Sanders' "facts" about thousands of suspected terrorists caught crossing the Mexican border. Wallace countered by saying they catch most criminals and suspected terrorists at airports and other ports of entry.

What was Trump's endgame? His administration took an inhumane approach to border security, calling those seeking asylum "criminals." Border security is essential. And immigration reform is much overdue. Any changes should consider the humanitarian cost for those coming into our country and those already here. Passage of DACA would go a long way in remedying part of this issue.

The admission by Virginia’s Democrat Governor, Ralph Northam, that he, along with the state's attorney general, Mark Herring, had dressed in blackface in the 1980s has unearthed the recent history of the practice. Many are shocked; some are not surprised.

As with the #MeToo movement, blackface confronts us with serious and hard-to-answer questions. Should we judge past behavior by today's standards? Is any questionable behavior in one's past cause for lifetime vilification? Or is it important to see how that person has changed? Is redemption possible in the public sphere? Does it matter if one is in the limelight as a politician, actor, or movie mogul? Do we consider the culture of the times as we might when looking at Thomas Jefferson's life? His writings are a foundation for our country, yet he was a slave owner and even had a child by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.

The revelations of these Virginia politicians hit us hard and fast. The preponderance of blackface photos in college yearbooks and the exhuming of this shallowly buried racial past have only deepened our concerns. What do we do with these facts? How do we respond?

Three Washington Post op-eds give us possible paths: "Yes, politicians wore blackface. It used to be all-American 'fun.'" by Rhae Lynn Barnes, assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University, "How Ralph Northam and others can repent of America’s original sin" by Reverend William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and from former Congresswoman Donna Edwards: "I’m from the same generation as Northam and Herring. Their behavior is mind-boggling."

Talking about it and listening to others is the only way through this. Otherwise, our ignorance isn't just ignorance. It's willful ignorance.

On March 22, 2019, Robert Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Barr released a 448 page redacted version to the public a month later. The Justice Department redacted parts to protect President Trump's executive privilege, preventing Congress from seeing the full report. The attorney general issued a four-page letter summarizing the investigation's conclusions, which Mueller said "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions," leading to "public confusion." Mueller testified to Congress the findings did not exonerate the President from obstruction. Trump could be prosecuted for this after he leaves office.

Clashes continued into 2020 when the Senate Intelligence Committee released its final report on Russian influence in our 2016 elections. The bipartisan committee, headed by North Carolina's Republican Senator Richard Burr, voted 14-1 to accept its findings, which, as reported by the Washington Post, included "damning details of contacts between the Trump campaign...and Russian operatives."

Until Donald Trump's campaign linking illegal immigration to a rise in crime, few had ever heard of the term "sanctuary city." Like so many other words, partisanship weaponized the phrase. In reality, studies show the immigrant crime rate is not any greater than crimes committed by citizens.

In November 2018, May Davis, the deputy White House policy coordinator, floated a proposal to ship undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities to ease the overcrowding occurring on the Mexican border. ICE rejected that proposal as an unnecessary operational burden on the agency, with an expenditure that would be hard to justify.

Yet, Trump resurrected the plan with a series of tweets in April 2019. He implied he would love to punish liberal opposition to his immigration policies by dumping the "problem" on them. While the White House never seriously considered the plan, the President's remarks conveyed his ongoing need for revenge against those who disagreed with him.

Human migration is a global issue. As long as war, violence, and persecution force people to flee their homes, immigration and asylum seekers will find their way to our country. And, if our national policy is to separate families and condemn them to cages, sanctuary cities will continue to oppose this action and welcome them.

On May 8, 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "Let me be clear: I will be the ‘grim reaper’ in the Senate when it comes to socialist schemes that would destroy jobs, private health insurance, and the free enterprise system."

McConnell calls anything that includes government help for its citizens "socialism." That includes Social Security and Medicare. While politicians support “corporate socialism," which provides for government bailouts for the automobile industry and banks, the senator is against any program that helps individual Americans. He wanted the 2020 election to be a referendum between "socialism" and "capitalism," a government-run or corporate-run economy. That, he suggested, is our only choice.

But that isn’t our only choice. No one is calling for a socialist (i.e. communist) society. Instead, many support a mixed economy where government and corporations work together to build robust systems that can withstand supply chain disruptions, natural disasters, and world political events. This mixed economy would prioritize workers with living wages, health benefits, and other programs to reduce income inequality.

Billionaire capitalist Ray Dalio has called the disparity between rich and poor an existential threat to our country. He has said that most Americans see the United States as a country with great opportunities for economic mobility and freedom. In reality, we are one of the least economically mobile countries in the developed world. Dalio states, "Low incomes, poorly funded schools, and weak family support for children lead to poor academic achievement, which leads to low productivity and low incomes of people who become economic burdens on the society." This system has locked the poor in place for generations.

We prioritize profits while often ignoring this strategy's effect on American workers. Instead, Dalio suggests corporate and government leaders work together to adjust capitalism, so we invest in our workers while growing our capital. JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon summed up this shift by saying, "Capitalism enables competition, innovation, and choice. This is not to say that capitalism does not have flaws, that it isn’t leaving people behind, and that it shouldn’t be improved."

There are many grim reapers in our society today. But Mitch McConnell is proud to be the grimmest. He's not interested in fixing the system that keeps people poor (ironic since he represents Kentucky, which has the fourth-highest poverty rate in the country). Instead, he obstructs any change that better reflects the needs of Americans.

[Pictured behind McConnell are other American grim reapers. From left to right: Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Alex Jones.]

In 2017, after attending France's Bastille Day parade, Donald Trump wanted his own parade. And, he said, we could "top [the French]." The military was against it. It would cost too much money, and for what? It was to be Trump's own personal victory parade.

Biding his time, in 2019, the president turned our non-political July 4th celebration on the National Mall into one more suited to his ego. July 4th, the United States' Independence Day, has traditionally been a non-partisan holiday, filled with parades, bands, and fireworks across the country. Instead, we got a military flyover and military parade down Constitution Avenue, costing millions of dollars, crowned by a speech by Trump at the Lincoln Memorial.

We could have better used the money to feed and find homes for the homeless, veterans, and asylum seekers on our border with Mexico. Veteran groups protested by handing out John McCain t-shirts at Trump’s rally. Trump had vilified Senator McCain many times, even after he died.

Donald, July 4th is about our country, celebrating what America should represent. It's not for you; it's for all of us.

Fruitful discourse has devolved since the beginning of the internet. We often ignore the adage, "If you can't say anything nice about someone, say nothing at all," in contemporary political discussions. This challenge isn’t new. In the New Testament, Ephesians 4:29 states, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

As an artist who makes posters about political discourse and as an online moderator on the Chamomile Tea Party's Facebook page, I have a particular approach to moderating heated conversations. Everyone has a right to their opinion and their anger, no matter how displaced I may think it is. However, no one has a right to spew that angry opinion on someone else. Being angry and being respectful are not mutually exclusive. It's not the emotion that gets us in trouble; it's how we express it.

The most fearful of monsters is a well-known friend, slightly altered.
Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

It’s understandable when we fear foreign terrorist groups who condemn our country's values. But what happens when that condemnation comes from other Americans? Extremism in any form and from any place is dangerous. It's too easy to demonize others, and it's too easy to dehumanize Brown and Black people. We ignore one of the most serious concerns about our national tranquility: homegrown extremists.

It didn’t help when President Trump called immigration from Central America an "invasion," tells four nonwhite Congresswomen to "go back" to where they "originally came from," and criticizes Jews who vote for Democrats as "disloyal." These emboldened white supremacists while Trump supporters and the Republican Party downplayed his comments as comical, off-the-cuff remarks. We should take these comments seriously.

Critical thinking is being subsumed by reactive thinking. Be informed and seek multiple news outlets. Get to know where each candidate stands and vote! The downfall of the American way of life won't come from the Islamic State. It will come from within. Ignorance and fear are rotting America's core values. It's time to stop being our own worst enemy.

White supremacy is one of the most dangerous domestic issues our country faces. Executive Order 13224, signed by President George W. Bush after 9/11, gives the government legal tools to deal with international terrorism. But it doesn't convey to domestic hate groups. The Immigration and Nationality Act expressly prohibits the Department of State from "sanctioning groups with a significant domestic presence."

Right-wing extremism isn't new. Yet, there's no federal law that criminalizes domestic terrorist groups. We are more likely to treat domestic terrorism (like the 2019 massacre in El Paso) as hate crimes.

In December 2019, by an executive order signed by President Trump, Judaism became a protected class under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI states, "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Title VI does not cover religion. The president signed the order to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses. Yet it's unclear whether it’s anti-Semitism or anti-Israel that's at the root of campus discord. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's advisor and son-in-law, attempted to clarify this when he said, "Anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism." Most Jews would disagree. They can be Jewish and still protest the actions of the Israeli government.

Trump's order implied Judaism is a race or a nationality, neither of which most Jews want. Like the Nazis and the Soviets, who designated Jews as a separate nationality, it connotes an old anti-Semitic trope, implying Jews are not loyal to the country in which they live. Speaking to the Israeli American Council in Hollywood, Florida, a few days before he signed the order, Trump invoked this notion of "dual loyalty" when he said that many American Jews "don't love Israel enough."

Part 1: Partisanship on Overdrive
Part 2: The Electorate
Part 3: Politicians and Our Political Process
Part 4: The Issues
Part 5: Post-Truth: The Contentious 2016 Election
Part 6: Post Election: Post-Truth Reaches New Heights
Part 7: Immigration, Obstruction, Redaction, Oh My!

Download a brief bibliography of topics covered in this exhibit.