George Bailey believed in our better selves — so should we

What strikes me this year as I watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” is George Bailey’s belief in our essential “better selves.”

George calls out the best in the ordinary people around him — the Italian tavern owner, Martini; the cop and taxi driver, Ernie and Bert; and the wayward Violet. His faith in Mr. Gower, for example, shifts the balance of the druggist’s life away from disgrace and despair toward wholeness and self-respect.

This is George’s talent and gift — to believe that people can overcome their fears, lapses and worst impulses.

It’s not that he cannot recognize evil, it’s just that he does not confuse the single-minded greed and lust for power in someone like Mr. Potter with simple human weakness.

“I see what you’re after — something that you haven’t been able to get your hands on, and it galls you,” George says to Potter at the pivotal board meeting of the Bailey Building and Loan.

“Something you haven’t been able to get your hands on” sounds a lot like what drives our president and the Republican majority in Congress. George Bailey, at least, is clear about the way that Potter’s drive toward bigger profits, coupled with his desire to win for winning’s sake, reduces ordinary working people to “cattle.”

George doesn’t want to be the one holding everything together in his small hometown. His choices to do the right thing cost him his ambitions and a measure of freedom.

But, the startling difference between his peaceful Bedford Falls and the raucous Pottersville filled with people escaping their lives in drunkenness and vice rests on George’s simple insistence that we (and even he himself) can be better people than we believe we can.

Potter is a dangerous man — but only if we buy into his vision of the world.

This past year’s headlines, filled with stories of the worst of us — men abusing power in all kinds of ways, leaders failing the trust of their constituents or bombing their own cities out of existence — play directly into the hands of the Mr. Potters of this world who would have us buy into the notion that we cannot expect anything but betrayal and abuse, so we better get used to it.

The powerful (and progressive) message of “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that we deserve to expect and demand the best from ourselves and those around us — particularly those in power. George Bailey gambles everything on his belief in our better selves when he asks his Building and Loan shareholders to trust each other and stick together to preserve their own best interests against Potter’s greed and power grabbing.

Trusting each other, sticking together may seem counter-intuitive at this moment in history, but events like Doug Jones’ election as the new U.S. senator from Alabama prove that George Bailey’s faith in us may not be misplaced.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 7:13 PM with the headline "George Bailey believed in our better selves — so should we."