‘The only winning move is not to play’

There are, as we all know, certain lines from movies and TV shows that have gone on to become contemporary proverbs in their own right. Like, say, “We need a bigger boat” (from ‘Jaws’), or; “I love it when a plan comes together” (from ‘The A-Team’), or; “Whitney, we have a Houston!”, from…

Hang on, that last one can’t be right. But still… you all know perfectly well what it was supposed to be: the line spoken by Tom Hanks in ‘Apollo 13’; and which has since become an instantly (and universally) recognisable way of conveying the message that…

a) Oops! Something doesn’t quite add up here… and;

b) The consequences of this oversight are likely to be… erm… SERIOUS.

All in all, then, you don’t exactly need a PhD in Advanced Communications Psychology to understand why these quotes, and so many others, have so firmly established themselves in the collective conscious.

For instance: even if you belong to the 0.001% of the world’s population that has never actually watched the 1939 version of ‘The Wizard of Oz’: starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, and… um… whatever the dog’s real name was, as Toto…

… you will still instantly recognise the line: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” And you will intuitively understand the (somewhat sinister) implications, too: i.e., that the circumstances have suddenly and inexplicably ‘changed’; and that a new way of thinking may be required, to confront this alien new paradigm. (Oh, and a pair of magical Ruby Slippers might come in handy, too. But let’s not take the Scarecrow’s advice too literally, and wander off in two directions at once….)

No, the point is that all these contemporary proverbs exist for a reason: they are uniquely applicable to circumstances for which no other ‘traditional’ proverb seems to exist.

Which brings me to the one I chose as a headline for this particular article. Admittedly, it requires a little more in the way of ‘geekery’ to instantly recognise that as a quote from the 1983 film ‘WarGames’ (starring Matthew Broderick, and…. oh, just look up the rest on Wikipedia, will you?)…

So for the benefit of those with lower-than-average geekery levels – and complete with the obligatory DEF-CON warning: “A Spoiler Alert is now in effect (until around paragraph 19)”… here is a brief – and grossly over-simplified – synopsis of the film.

In ‘WarGames’, Matthew Broderick plays a teenage computer whizz-kid who unwittingly hacks into… let’s just say, the mainframe Pentagon computer controlling access to the US nuclear codes (it’s actually way more complex than that; but this will suffice for now).

Under the impression that he is ‘playing a computer game’, he accidentally precipitates a full-scale, global, nuclear security threat: characterised by that immortal alarm-system which is, in itself, part of this film’s contribution to global pop-culture: DEF-CON 1, 2, 3, 4, and… Ker-BLA-A-A-M!

When DEF-CON level reaches 5, it’s ‘Game Over’ (not just for Matthew Broderick, of course; but for the entire planet.)

Anyway: so much for the basic plot. There is, however, a twist of sorts (look: I told there were going to be spoilers, didn’t I?); and it is that the computer’s original programmer – now a disillusioned hermit in self-imposed exile – eventually returns to save the day.

He does this by attempting to convince the computer - through its own logical thought-processes – of the sheer futility of what it was actually trying to do. More specifically: he challenges it to play endless games of ‘Tic-Tac-Toe’ against itself (that’s ‘Noughts and Crosses’, if you were born on the other side of the Atlantic)…

…and it doesn’t take the computer all that long (or at least: only long enough to create a highly effective, tension-filled climax) to calculate every single possible permutation, of every single move, over millions upon millions of games, only to finally conclude that…

…in its own words: “[Nuclear War] is a strange game: the only winning move is not to play.”

Likewise, it doesn’t take all that much effort to appreciate why those words are so uniquely applicable to what’s going on in Malta right now. All you have to do is:

Replace ‘the USA’ and ‘the Soviet Union’, with the ‘Labour’ and ‘Nationalist’ parties;

Replace the ‘threat of a Nuclear War’, with the (very real) ‘media and communications warfare’ in which both those parties are interminably engaged;

Replace ‘nuclear missiles and warheads’ with the twin media empires of Net and One TV (and all their online equivalents);

…and lastly, throw into the mix an ever-expanding arsenal of online media ‘weaponry’ – now also including random videos of political opponents, caught on camera while on holiday, and uploaded onto Tik-Tok by faithful citizen ‘soldiers’ – and, well, surely you can already see a certain resemblance between the two scenarios.

But let me give you a more cogent, relevant example. Just yesterday, the Labour Party issued a statement – in reaction to a press conference, in which the PN accused it of soliciting a E200,000 ‘donation’ from Yorgen Fenech – claiming that: “it had a story of its own up its sleeve”; that “the PN and Opposition leader Bernard Grech would soon have a lot to answer for”; and accusing the PN of “trying to intimidate those that work for and with the PL” (something it would “not tolerate”, please note)…

Now: leaving aside, for the moment, the small curiosity that: for a statement that seems to deplores ‘intimidation’ so much… it is, in itself, pretty darn ‘intimidating’, you know…

No, the real problem is that it represents exactly the same sort of nuclear stand-off that characterised the entire Cold War, from the 1950s all the way up to the late 1980s: “You have a nuclear warhead aimed at our capital city? Well, guess what? We have one aimed at yours, too. Your finger is on the Big Red Button? What do you know? So is mine…” Etc., etc., etc.

There is, however, a small difference. Like it or not, the ‘nuclear deterrent’ model has indeed proved quite successful – so far, at any rate – when it comes to actually avoiding World War Three. Admittedly, it remains a far-from satisfactory long-term solution… for let’s face it: nothing has substantially changed – in terms of which countries actually possess nuclear weapons; what targets all their respective missiles are aimed at, etc. – since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. (We’re just a little less overtly paranoid about it today, that’s all.)

But that sort of thing only applies – and even then, only for a short time – in the case of a REAL nuclear deterrent: i.e., where the price of actually pressing that Big Red Button really is too exorbitant to even so much as contemplate.

On the other hand, however: the consequences of unleashing yet another minor (or even major) political ‘scandal’, targeting this, that or the other politician…

…in a country where (let’s face it) ‘scandals’ have become a dime-a-dozen lately (so much so that you can now even pick them up as souvenirs from the Tomb of Christ in Jerusalem…);

…and where, in any case, absolutely anyone at all can so very easily be targeted by concocted allegations, at any given moment (especially seeing as the definition of ‘scandal’ seems to forever keep changing: I seem to remember a time, for instance, when it wasn’t quite so ‘scandalous’ to buy a luxury yacht from a formerly respectable, multimillionaire tycoon…)

… but you can probably already see where all this is headed. This particular ‘WarGame’ our two political parties seem to enjoy so much – this nuclear stand-off, consisting of an endlessly repeated threat: “You have a scandal about me? Well, guess what? I have one about you, too!”… it can’t possibly work as a deterrent, you know.

And it can’t lead to any form of ‘victory’, either. In fact, all it ever can really achieve – and all it has ever achieved in the past, for that matter – is just a gradual intensification of hostilities; an ever-growing accumulation of hurtful attacks, that can only ever elicit equally hurtful reprisals… until DEF-CON 1 becomes DEF-CON 2; then 3; then 4, then 5… and far beyond that limit, too…

Because that’s another difference, right there. Unlike a real nuclear war, there isn’t even that small crumb of comfort – such that it is – that the actual war itself (if not its consequences for unlucky survivors) would all be over, quite literally, ‘in a flash’…

No, there is simply no end in sight at all, to this particular media war… no bottom, to this pit of filth and stench into which we are so rapidly (and, it must be said, so willingly) allowing ourselves to sink…

Unless, that is, both sides finally come round to doing what all the world’s nuclear powers have so far manifestly failed to do: and reach a mutual ‘Nuclear Disarmament’ agreement, of the kind that would end years (if not decades) of incessant, relentless, and increasingly invasive media warfare...

And… come on. That’s not such a bad outcome for the two parties themselves, either, is it now?

After all, it’s not exactly as though they can both realistically afford to keep this up for very much longer… when they can’t even settle a measly E5 million in unpaid tax arrears…

So tell you what: how about we all choose another strategy instead… and try and win this game by… erm… not actually playing at all? And how about, say, we all ‘play a nice game of chess’ instead?

You know, just a thought…