Trump turns America into ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Pottersville

Trump turns America into ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Pottersville

Commentary by Jim Downard | FāVS News

When knee deep in my writing projects, part of my non-fiction brain is getting a grip on the dating of ancient supernovas, while the fiction-writing part is parked in 1876 wondering what the dangerous Russian countess will do next to find out about Mr. Phileas Fogg’s mystery airship that attacked the “Great Eastern” steamship in 1872. At the same time, I often stick on some peripheral video amusement while I input sources or buff up a paragraph and discover there are whole channels of young people devoted to watching movies they’d never seen before and giving their reaction.

Old movies, like ones made before 2000 … and when my eye caught the ones diving into the classic “Casablanca,” I followed their postings. So many young people, often couples, who had never seen a black and white movie before, or ones as old as the 1940s.

Spoiler alert: They discovered why it’s seen as a classic film.

But the mother Lode are the number of YouTube entries on “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the now-ubiquitous “Christmas film” classic that had premiered in the summer and flopped at the time, and only became a beloved favorite because it had fallen out of copyright and half a century ago bootleg grainy copies started turning up on TV stations needing to fill a couple of hours cheap.

Spoiler alert: Even the most jaded of smartphone savvy contemporary viewer finds themselves sucked into Frank Capra’s world, and up teary-eyed and anxious until George Bailey gets his life back, the snow falling yet again on a restored Bedford Falls, and with Zuzu’s petals safely in his pocket once again. The exhilaration as George rushes through the nurturing, friendly community to launch into his children and wife with an intensity earned at terrible price by the frightening experience of seeing the world as if he’d never been born, an alternate universe nightmare granted by the sweet old Angel Second Class Clarence.

It’s a populist (indeed “Woke”?) exposition on how interconnected human lives are, a 1940s liberal paean to how the environment we live in shapes our “nature” for good or ill. Only the banker Mr. Potter, who’s earned his status as “the meanest man in town,” is just as big of a jerk in the Pottersville alternate world as he is in Bedford Falls.

All of which compels me to some rather obvious analogies.

Trump 2.0

Donald Trump is every inch a Mr. Potter, if the heartless, greedy nastiness were also lathered with gobs of pathological Roy-Cohn-style Big Lying whenever he’s caught trying to bluff his way around reality (legal or moral). And incompetence, because Mr. Potter at least was actually good at making money, a task the business fraud Trump has seldom accomplished, apart from convincing millions of MAGA to part with their $99 for overpriced (and Made in China) Trump-themed trinkets to keep his Trumptanic fueled to steam us all into the next field of icebergs.

But Trump 2.0 doesn’t merely have our arrogant Mr. Potter in charge of things. His administration is a veritable avalanche of Potters, oligarch billionaires put in charge of agency after agency, where people whose limousine/private plane/gated estate lives now control the levers of the people’s government in ways guaranteed to serve the needs of their own bottom line and not the nation they are supposed to make a More Perfect Union.

And that certainly includes that Ketamine Krazy Kat Elon Musk, rampaging with his Incel Clown Posse to chain saw hack agencies apart, claiming to having found vast piles of fraud and abuse, which have so far failed to be verified by reality checks. Their promised billions turning into millions and maybe even less. Their placeholder zeros vanishing like the morning dew.

What Angel Clarence persuaded 77 million Americans to vote Mr. Potter back in charge I don’t know, but that one doesn’t deserve any wings.

Donald Trump’s fantasyland: His 1870’s rariff nirvana

Just as so many younger viewers of “It’s A Wonderful Life” aren’t aware of the details of the 1919 Influenza or the Great Depression or WWII George Bailey lived through, apart from the vague recollection of whatever got covered in the high school history class they may not have been all that interested in at the time, in Trump 2.0 we have a President whose grip on historical reality is vastly worse than that of even the least informed YouTube viewer.

As a historian of sorts (a bachelor’s in it from Eastern Washington University) whose areas of study included 19th century America, my jaw drops every time I hear Donald Trump rhapsodize about how idyllic our nation was in the period 1870 to 1913, a time of unparalleled growth and prosperity, and due entirely to protective tariffs. Why, we were doing so well we even had government surpluses. Wasn’t that just a wonderful life?

Reality checks:

● That period was a time of grinding poverty and intense wealth inequality, documented most poignantly by the likes of Jacob Riis’ riveting 1890 photo expose, “How the Other Half Lives” (even “billionaire” Mr. Trump would have access to that information, had he the gumption to seek it out, such as at Project Gutenberg for the book with the photographs or an online gallery for the photographs in clear detail.

● As for the massive economic growth in that time, far more significant than the tariffs protecting selected industries from competition (from the Pullman Company to steel and textiles, all enterprises notorious for their dismal labor records while so protected) was our policy of unrestricted immigration (apart from the Chinese, who were excluded from coming to our Utopia after 1882). And we’re talking millions of immigrants, so many we built a shiny new Ellis Island to handle them all. The Hamburg-America Line built huge dormitories at their German pier to funnel the unwashed masses into their steamers to ship them to America’s wide open Golden Door.

● There were government surpluses not so much because tariffs were reeling in vast sums but because the Federal system was so small it didn’t do much of anything, especially when the utterly unregulated Robber-Baron economy went through its recurring crashes, such as:

● The two massive depressions that took place in that period, 1873-1877 (so bad it rippled out to drag down Britain, where it lasted into the 1880s) and 1893-1897 (caused by the brain-dead tariff and inflationary silver purchase policies of the GOP Harrison administration wedged in between the two Grover Cleveland terms — William McKinley was cosponsor of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, take note) leading to terrible labor unrest and ultimately an era of progressive reforms in both major parties (from imperialist Teddy Roosevelt who became President after McKinley’s assassination, to racist Woodrow Wilson presiding over the new income tax and Federal Reserve system that so infuriates the billionaires infesting Trump’s cabinet today).

As oblivious to that tumultuous history as any modern YouTuber who slept through their high school history lessons, Trump 2.0 whittles it all down to the fantasies favored by baby-“Goldfinger” golf course deadbeat Donald, his blockheaded obsession with William McKinley and tariffs. And how wantonly he and his Project 2025 minions strive to pull the plug on the very factors that actually did generate wealth and progress during those years, the dynamic growth of an international melting pot of foreign millions becoming Americans, making that American dream by dint of their collective sweat-equity.

The very people George Bailey settled into the Bailey Park housing development, and which Mr. Potter wanted to keep in his over-priced renter slums.

Zuzu’s Petals

Thanks to the blundering votes of 77 million Americans last year, acting as our de facto Clarence, we get to see our own alternate world, as Trump 2.0 works tirelessly to transform every Bedford Falls into Pottersvilles, complete with as many underpaid jobs as the oligarchs deign to grant the Rabble.

For the time being we’re stuck there, but that doesn’t mean were not there at all. Millions of us, including even the ones who voted for Trump but are now failing to see the “From Day One” miracles of lowered prices and feel anything like the “You’ll Be So Tired Of Winning” snake-oil-brag huckster Trump so shamelessly promised.

Like it or not, we’re all George Bailey running down the sleazy neon main street of Pottersville.

There may or may not be jobs aplenty in Trump 2.0 for those shorn of dignity or hope. As stock-grounded retirement nest eggs disintegrate for millions who never imagined any Presidency could be such idiot blunderers to run the economic ship of state straight into a crash (like it wasn’t inevitable, given Donald Trump’s legendary skill at tanking his own businesses, including gambling casinos).

But don’t worry, the Mr. Potter billionaires will do just fine — so long as we let them — growing richer still from a system they can now rig to help them even more, at least until the voters wise up and release how badly they’d been conned, and pull the plug on their rampage at the next ballot. Assuming civil rights trampling Trump 2.0 still goes in for that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, as the unregulated crypto industry balloons, sucking up the power grid faster than AI, is there time to stop and wonder whether there can even be a place in these Pottersvilles for Zuzu’s petals?

Check your pocket, while there’s still time.

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.