Mr. Potter and Donald Trump
(This is an excerpt from Robert Reich’s important Substack. We urge you to read the entire story there.)
Pope Leo recently said his favorite movie of all time was “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Mine too. I first watched it when I was a kid in the early 1950s. For years, it was shown the week before Christmas. I loved it. Still do.
The pope’s and my favorite movie has a lot to tell us about where America is right now, and the scourge of Donald Trump.
If you don’t already know it, the central conflict in the movie is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart).
Potter is a greedy, cruel banker. In his Social Darwinist view of America, people compete with one another for scarce resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race.
Potter, in other words, is Trump.
George is the generous, honorable head of Bedford Falls’ building-and-loan company, the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town.
After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan company, Potter — who sits on the bank’s board — seeks to dissolve it. Potter claims George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”
Exactly what Trump would say (think of his cuts to Medicaid, refusal to extend Obamacare subsidies, and withholding of food stamps during the government shutdown).
To George, though, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” George’s father helped them build homes on credit so they could have a decent life.
“People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”
When George’s Uncle Billy accidentally loses some bank deposits that fall into Potter’s hands, the banker sees an opportunity to ruin George. (Trump would do precisely the same.)
This brings George to a bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless, before a guardian angel counsels him to think about what Bedford Falls would be like if George hadn’t been born — poor, fearful, and completely dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped — virtually the entire town — pitches in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.
It’s a cartoon, of course — both a utopian and a dystopian version of America — but the cartoon poses a choice that’s become all too relevant: Do we join together, or do we let the Potters of America — Trump and his billionaire backers — run and ruin everything?