Explaining the zero-sum game that American politics has devolved into using a little bit of ‘80s pop culture.
This is a short post by the editor, taken from a segment of the July 9th issue of the From the Hawk’s Next newsletter.
Let’s play tic-tac-toe. You heard me right, tic-tac-toe. Pop-culture and 80s nerds may have an idea of what I’m getting at. For those who have no clue, let’s talk Matthew Broderick.
Now, I wasn’t born until 1987. I have no memory of the cold war or even the Berlin Wall coming down. I have faint memories of my dad getting orders to ship to Desert Storm before he got stood down, but by then, the world was already a very different place. Without growing up facing the very real possibility of thermonuclear war, it’s hard for me to appreciate the terror my parents’ generation lived with for decades.
But I caught a glimpse of what the world went through when, as a kid, I watched WarGames for the first time.
For those who are unfamiliar with WarGames, it’s a 1983 movie about a young hacker who unwittingly hacks into a government computer system and starts playing a game with an artificial intelligence. He doesn’t know that the AI is actually in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal.
The hacker, played by Matthew Broderick, plays what he thinks is a computer game as the Soviet Union in a Global Thermonuclear War scenario. The AI reacts in real-time, not understanding the difference between reality and simulation.
Long story short, spoilers to follow, the situation escalates towards Armageddon as the AI is determined to instigate a nuclear war and “win the game.”
It isn’t until Broderick’s character has the AI play a game of tic-tac-toe with itself that the world is saved from the brink of disaster.
For those who don’t know, tic-tac-toe is impossible to win if every move is followed by a perfect response. By having the AI play tic-tac-toe, Broderick’s character taught it the concept of futility. After applying this new logic to its ongoing game of Thermonuclear War, the AI concludes there can be no winner in a scenario of mutually assured destruction.
The AI concludes that nuclear war is “a strange game” in which “the only winning move is not to play.”
What does any of this have to do with politics? Simple. Tic-tac-toe and nuclear war are both zero-sum games. The moves taken to win are always at the direct expense of the opponent, who responds in kind. The end game is always dysfunction and destruction.
The political contest in today’s America has devolved into a zero-sum game.
Over the last hundred years, we have created a presidency vastly more powerful than envisioned by America’s founding fathers. Congress has slowly ceded copious amounts of its own power to the executive branch, aiding in the creation of a vast bureaucracy that ultimately answers only to the President.
Through the use of regulatory and emergency powers, the President can proceed almost with impunity in enacting national policy with or without the consent of Congress.
This reality has long been hidden by the fact that many Presidents have mostly chosen to keep their actions within established norms. But in the past 20 years, situations have arisen that have provided excuses to our current and recent presidents to break established norms and reveal just how powerful the presidency has become.
The American people have responded as should be expected. Recognizing just how consequential presidential elections have become, the various factions have engaged in a pitched battle for control of the presidency. And, from Obama’s “elections have consequences” and “bitter-clinger” comments to Trump’s constant ad-hominem attacks on anyone who doesn’t support him, it’s clear to see there is no respect for the rights or viewpoints of those who lose an election in our current climate.
In this zero-sum game of electoral politics, there’s never going to be a winner, and each round is just going to bring us closer and closer to the brink of collapse. The only way to win, the only way to save our republic, is to teach the American people the futility of the game they’re playing, to teach them not to play it anymore.
The only way I know to do that is to try and go back to the basics, to teach the tic-tac-toe reality of human behavior and why our nation’s government was established as a constitutionally limited republic with necessary checks and balances on power.
As the founders knew too well, men are not angels and never will be. Expecting a government to function justly when it must rely on the best men, and women, to always hold the reins of power is an exercise in futility.
Until we find a way to restore balance in the system, until the American people learn the futility of playing this partisan game of mutually assured destruction, the establishment of liberty and justice is never going come from simply removing whichever demagogue happens to have risen to the top of the ash heap.
- The Liberty Hawk is Now on Medium - December 9, 2020
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