My favorite Christmas movie?
It used to be “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But that was before life in the United States of America imitated art, and the story line for a Hollywood cinematic classic featured every December became our new reality.
Now I’m not so sure.
If you have seen the movie even once upon a time, or every Christmas for the last 30-some years like my wife and I have, you probably recognize a scene in which George Bailey is given a tour of his hometown, Bedford Falls, only to realize it no longer exists. In its place is the town of Pottersville, named after the richest man in town, Henry Potter, the local banker and real estate tycoon. In place of Bailey Park, the housing development George created with his family’s modest building and loan company, Potter’s Field is now filled with run down rental units owned by Mr. Potter. For escape, the tenants can go downtown to tavern row. As George comes face to face with the new city’s welcome sign, and its new tavern row, he looks on with horror as the above picture reveals.
I know that look. I have something of that same expression these days as I look ahead to the new presidential administration facing us all here in America and beyond come January 21, 2025. The likes of Henry Potter having been elected President effective that date, Bedford Falls is about to pass into oblivion.
Welcome to Pottersville.
So in the movie, as you may already know, Henry Potter was able to convince George Bailey that he would, on account of his “measly little life insurance policy,” still be better off dead than alive. Slightly less than 50% of America’s voters in our November election heard the same general pitch from our incoming President as regards our federal government. Better off dead than alive? Better off dead than in prison for bank fraud after a warrant for their arrest has been taken out? Their family better off? The world better off?
Well, we’re about to find out.
If this allegory holds, i.e., seeing tomorrow’s America in the drama of Bedford Falls when George Bailey agrees with Henry Potter that he’d be better off dead than alive, then let’s all pray that America has a Clarence. That we all have a guardian angel anxious to get his wings.
Maybe, just maybe, America will in due time come to see what the world would be like if we’d never been born. That’s right. Welcome to England. And probably France, Spain, even Russia (formerly known as the State of Alaska).
Or wait.
Had we never been born, we would not have been there to save England, France, or Russia from the German expansion of Adolf Hitler less than a century ago. And democracy?
What democracy? Colonial expansion was brought about by Christian Nationalism, and a victory by King George III over the band of American revolutionaries back when would have changed the entire trajectory of this thing called Constitutional democracy based on any inalienable human rights. What human rights? Don't you mean the Divine Right of Kings?
How’s Clarence doing so far?
You see, when our new administration takes hold in 2025 and we shift our alliance away from democracy and equal rights for all to the new Russian-style oligarchy using the Putin model, then the whole world will be like……………..well, I hate to tell you, but the world would then be like Pottersville. The world’s largest white male oligarchs could own most property and rent it out to everyone else for a significant profit. By these corporate oligarchs overpaying for land and then hiking up the property tax base, small owners would have to sell and then apply their initial windfall to their new lease in hopes rents did not rise too quickly. Welcome to Pottersville. No more of this little penny-ante or two bit democracy the likes of some Bailey Building & Loan. Now all boarded up. No more Bailey Park. Don't you mean Pottersville?
So, Clarence, what if we then want to go back?
What if, after we see and the world sees what things are like if we’d never been born, we decide that life as we previously knew it really was wonderful after all? Then what?
That’s my question as I look ahead…..well beyond 2025. Will there be any going back?
Not saying here that I don’t believe in angels. Or guardian angels for the likes of George Bailey and the United States of America. Let’s just say I want to believe. Because I want to leave Pottersville. I want to return to the likes of Bedford Falls, and to that silly old Building & Loan where at least people don’t have to go crawling to Mr. Potter.
I, for one, want to sing “Auld Lang Syne” again like I really mean it.
And I want the world to see a sign that once again says WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
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