“It’s a Wonderful Life” - is Trump like the Potter character?
A fixation on individuals will always hide what is actually happening
As I read the following article, I became as confused with the fixation on individuals as I regularly am reading mainstream Western thinking.
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.
Trump is not Potter. Trump is more like a document from Potter’s files managing to get leaked to the public. The document reveals Potter more openly, but is not itself Potter.
For me, Potter is a fictional character representing a set of hierarchical systems. There are a variety of hierarchical systems that come to mind (Anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, Capitalism, Racism, Abelism, etc), but no one of them alone is Potter.
I have watched It’s a Wonderful Life several times before, as some people watch it as a Christmas tradition. I’ve regularly been bothered (confused?) by the fact that so many people watch and love it, and yet don’t see the connection to their own lives and various systems which they uphold and/or identify with.
I have been as frustrated with (confused by?) mainstream reporting on the Epstein documents, as if the problems these documents help disclose relate only to a few individuals rather than sets of systems. There is nothing particularly special about these individuals. What people should be thinking about is the systems which create these issues in the first place: no society that claims to be “democratic” should allow the ongoing existence of hierarchical systems which grant so much power to so few individuals in the first place.
Instead of spending time trying to find “not me” individuals to point away from yourself, why can’t we all spend more time trying to strengthen democratic and other institutions to no longer be generating these problems?
Here is a recent video by Cy Canterel (longer version on YouTube) that uses systems theory to discuss the Epstein documents rather than the unhelpful focus on individuals far too many other commentators seem to have.
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Digging in the Epstein documents we see that at a certain level of wealth and power, traditional maps of how the world works stop making sense. We’re no longer dealing with institutional affiliations or national allegiances; we’re dealing with network topology, where power flows through connections rather than hierarchies. Using World-Systems Theory, we can make a better map of Epstein’s network.
I have undoubtedly created confusion based on what I perceive as worldviews, and a tendency to think in terms of conflicting or incompatible ones. It's perhaps best if I simply withdraw the question.
I wonder what Robert Reich's response would be. (I read his article in full only a few minutes before yours so it was still fresh in my memory.) Do you think both worldviews can be true?