If you don't know the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life", Mr. Potter is a craven, cynical, ruthless, sadistic and very rich guy who pretty much owns a town full of mostly working-class people for whom he has a lot of contempt and no pity at all. A pillar of the community, he is feared and respected because nearly everyone in town depends on him in some way, either as his employees, tenants or prey.
The most compelling scene in the movie is the one where George Bailey looks out onto broken-down shanties, belching smokestacks, flashing neon lights and desolate landscape of a town that somehow takes the place of his beloved Bedford Falls. Potterville is the town that would have been, but for the good deeds and fair dealing that define George's life. I love that scene because his despairing disbelief seems to mirror the way that I feel when I look at America in the age of Bush-Cheney.
Since the year 2000, Republicans have, for the most part controlled both houses of Congress, the White House, and of course the judiciary. For the past nearly eight years, this country has been exactly as Republicans have always wanted it. So it stands to reason that if you want to know what Republicans stand for . . .
you don't have to read suffer through their convention, or listen to right-wing radio. In fact those things are designed to, and very likely to mislead you. If you really want to know what today's "conservatism" is all about, all you have to do is look around. And like George Bailey's Potterville, it's a scary and depressing sight. Some examples:
We've lost our illusions about impartial justice thanks to the corrupt Supreme Court that brought us this Republican administration. Not coincidentally, we've also seen a serious erosion in our freedom from search and seizure. We don't even bat an eye at the notion that we can be eavesdropped on by our government - for no reason or any reason - and that we have no way to redress that wrong. Clearly abortion on demand isn't the only privacy right that the right abhors.
The gassing of peaceful protesters and the arrest of a well-known journalist, in America, provoke no outrage, but then again maybe that's because they don't warrant headlines.
Thanks to the GOP's pay to play ethic (best exemplified by the K Street project) our government is now thoroughly and unabashedly up for sale, often at shockingly low prices.
A handful of huge conglomerates controls our access to news, and is not shy about about manipulating information for its own greedy benefit.
The imperative of ever-rising profits for corporations has put us into a depressing cycle of manufactured need, debt-inducing consumption and insolvency. Who would have thought, ten years ago, that there would be ads in elevators, on gas pumps, and in grocery store lines? And who would have believed that credit card interest rates topping 30% (not including fees) would not only be tolerated, but would be the norm?
The mortgage crisis, made possible by ideolegy-fueled deregulation, is robbing Americans of their very futures, and doing so at an alarming rate.
Major media outlets either refuse to investigate important stories (like anthrax, or how we got into Iraq, or who's being eavesdropped on by our government) or bury their conclusions (like who won the 2000 election).
PBS and NPR look and sound like Pravda.
Mr. Potter didn't possess a sense of community, or even empathy. He didn't want the poor and working masses to own anything, to know anything, or to band together to try to improve their lot in life. Neither do the cartoon villains who have seized our government. There is some legitimate debate as to whether that's conservatism, libertarianism, or neo-fascism. But there's no denying that it is Republicanism, circa 2008.
Potter didn't believe in free markets, preferring to crush his competition through unfair practices.