The Exquisite Corpse of American Politics
The mortal danger of missing the bigger picture.
There’s an old parlor game from the early 1900s.
It’s called exquisite corpse.
It became popular in French cafes in the 1930s. Sometimes it’s called “consequences.” The game asked players to collaborate on a drawing. There was only one big rule. Each player couldn’t see what the previous one had drawn. They hid their part of the drawing by covering it up or folding it over.
Sometimes, the players wrote a short story or a poem instead of drawing a picture. You could make whatever you wanted. The main point was that nobody saw the bigger picture until the end of the game.
Eventually, the Surrealists adopted this game as a formal technique. It helped artists and writers think outside the box.
It gave them strange ideas.
When it comes to politics now, the exquisite corpse doesn’t offer inspiration so much as a window into our current crisis.
In every movement and political party these days, everyone sees their own small part of the bigger project. Some of us see the whole thing, but it’s hard to get anyone to listen. They care about their contribution, their ideology, and their ideas. They don’t pay attention to their teammates, and that wrecks us.
What does an exquisite corpse look like in politics?
It looks like this:
Every group focuses on their own perceptions of the biggest problems. They either ignore or reject the interests of their allies.
Corporate Democrats focus on Medicare and Medicaid cuts, but they don’t want to talk about white supremacy, except in the most superficial terms. Some of the groups focusing on white supremacy talk about the racism that cost us the 2024 election, but they won’t talk about the racism driving genocide in Gaza.
Everyone wants to talk about corruption in FEMA, but they don’t want to talk about how many more tragic floods we’re going to see, and how ill prepared we are at every level to deal with our climate future.
Almost nobody wants to talk about public health except when anti-vaxxers are going around spreading measles everywhere, but that’s far from the only time public health has mattered over the last four years.
Now everyone wants to talk about the latest scandal or coverup that’s going to bring down Trump. They don’t want to talk about how many times we’ve driven down this road, hit a dead end, and turned around.
Almost nobody wants to entertain alternative takes. So far, I’ve read one very smart column explaining the latest headlines.
This is what the exquisite corpse of American politics looks like. Since nobody can agree on what we should do next, everyone rallies around the latest hope that one big glitch in the Matrix will do the work for us.
They don’t get it.
Maybe you do.
Maybe you’ve cheated, and you’ve looked at the entire drawing. If you have, then you understand that MAGA isn’t angry at Trump because he’s a sexual predator. They’re angry at him for not lying better. They don’t expect him to be innocent. They expect him to do what he’s done so many times in the past, which is present them with a big box of garbage to sort through. So far, I’ve read one smart post explaining the bigger picture, and that’s it. Nobody seems to see it except us.
What else about this exquisite corpse?
These days, you find every group telling each other to put their own needs aside, no matter how important or urgent. You hear them telling each other to suck it up and vote for this or that candidate, even if that candidate has done reprehensible things—even if they’ve shown they can’t be trusted. You find each group fighting over what to call the concentration camps in Florida.
Everyone seems to have forgotten the value of intersectional politics and justice, realizing how our needs align.
Maybe you haven’t.
Maybe you understand the dangers of dismantling green projects and defunding weather forecasts, but you also understand the dangers of letting the public assume that renewable energy by itself will save humanity. Maybe you understand how it looks to let your own favorite celebrities off the hook for their private jets while bashing the ones you don’t like for theirs.
Maybe you understand the hypocrisy of focusing on the corruption in one party to the exclusion of the corruption in yours. Maybe you understand how the one feeds the other in a vicious cycle.
Maybe you understand the dangers of waiting to talk about public health until after anti-vaxxers have taken over the government.
Maybe you understand the moral bankruptcy of letting genocide happen in Gaza, because you know it’s backed and funded by elements in both parties who strongarm our politicians into endorsing war crimes. Maybe you understand it’s a field test for a new kind of warfare, engineered by everyone from Google to Palantir. Maybe you understand how this kind of warfare will eventually show up here in the U.S., deployed against our fellow citizens.
Maybe you understand that’s already happening.
Maybe you see the whole exquisite corpse of politics. You see how standing up for immigrants in the U.S. means standing up for Palestinians. You know it means standing up for transgender rights. You know it means standing up for women. You know it means standing up against white supremacy wherever it shows up. You know it means standing up against eugenics. You know it means standing up for public health, even when public health demands you do something inconvenient, thankless, and boring. You get it, and you do it.
Maybe you know better than to troll and sealion people who are supposed to be on your side, even if sometimes they say or do things that irritate you. Maybe you appreciate the difference between informing someone, educating them, critiquing them, expecting better of them, and attacking them.
Maybe you know that corporate Democrats, the ones who claim to speak for moderates, are in the business of splitting us apart. They’re telling us one group presents a liability to everyone else.
You know better.
You know that silence is never politically expedient. You know you can’t win elections by sacrificing elements of your own base.
You know you can’t emulate every Republican tactic, because Republicans campaign on the ignorance and hate of their voters. They convince Americans to vote against their own interests. You know that’s not a road to political victory. It’s only a road to cannibalism, and it ensures our destruction.
The exquisite corpse works for Republicans because they want everyone to be selfish and narrow-minded. They only want their voters and their donors to see one small part of everything. If they could see the bigger picture, grifters would have no power over them. They would join us.
You probably know what we’re up against. You also probably know that we’re not going to fix everything or save everyone. But we can do better than this. If we can’t, we know what the future looks like.
Not an exquisite corpse.
Just a corpse.