Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1409324
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 SEPTEMBER 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo 'The only winning move is not to play' THERE are, as we all know, cer- tain lines from movies and TV shows that have gone on to be- come 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 sup- posed to be: the line spoken by Tom Hanks in 'Apollo 13'; and which has since become an in- stantly (and universally) recog- nisable 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 ex- actly 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 be- long to the 0.001% of the world's population that has never actu- ally 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 rec- ognise the line: "We're not in Kansas anymore." And you will intuitively understand the (somewhat sinister) implica- tions, too: i.e., that the circum- stances have suddenly and in- explicably '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 unique- ly 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 par- ticular article. Admittedly, it re- quires a little more in the way of 'geekery' to instantly recognise that as a quote from the 1983 film 'WarGames' (starring Mat- thew 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 com- puter whizz-kid who unwitting- ly 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-cul- ture: 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-im- posed exile – eventually returns to save the day. He does this by attempt- ing to convince the comput- er - through its own logical thought-processes – of the sheer futility of what it was ac- tually trying to do. More specif- ically: 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 Atlan- tic)… …and it doesn't take the com- puter 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 final- ly 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 unique- ly applicable to what's going on in Malta right now. All you have to do is: Replace 'the USA' and 'the So- viet Union', with the 'Labour' and 'Nationalist' parties; Replace the 'threat of a Nu- clear War', with the (very real) 'media and communications warfare' in which both those parties are interminably en- gaged; Replace 'nuclear missiles and warheads' with the twin media empires of Net and One TV (and all their online equiva- lents); …and lastly, throw into the mix an ever-expanding arse- nal of online media 'weaponry' – now also including random videos of political opponents, caught on camera while on hol- iday, and uploaded onto Tik- Tok by faithful citizen 'soldiers' – and, well, surely you can al- ready see a certain resemblance between the two scenarios. But let me give you a more cogent, relevant example. Just yesterday, the Labour Party is- sued a statement – in reaction to a press conference, in which the PN accused it of soliciting a E200,000 'donation' from Yor- gen Fenech – claiming that: "it had a story of its own up its sleeve"; that "the PN and Op- position leader Bernard Grech would soon have a lot to an- swer for"; and accusing the PN of "trying to intimidate those that work for and with the PL" (something it would "not toler- ate", 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 char- acterised the entire Cold War, from the 1950s all the way up to the late 1980s: "You have a nu- clear warhead aimed at our cap- ital 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 success- ful – so far, at any rate – when it comes to actually avoiding World War Three. Admittedly, it remains a far-from satisfacto- ry long-term solution… for let's face it: nothing has substantial- ly changed – in terms of which countries actually possess nu- clear 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 re- ally is too exorbitant to even so much as contemplate. On the other hand, however: the consequences of unleashing yet another minor (or even ma- jor) political 'scandal', targeting this, that or the other politi- cian… A fan of the movie WarGames has created a singular thermostat in the form of a Defcon alert meter