Our Better Angels Wings Have Been Clipped

This piece is the first part, in what I hope to be a multi-dimensional exploration of the recent election results, and how we got where we are-from Adam and Eve to the price of eggs!

For all of you old movie lovers, the results of the election brings to mind the old time classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It is a story about good vs evil, hope vs despair and how in darkness we return to the light. It takes place in Bedford Falls- quintessential small-town America. The main character, played by the inimitable Jimmy Stewart, is a man of virtue, deep moral character and what I would like to call a true “mensch.” He is juxtaposed against  his miscreant counterpart, Mr. Potter. (Played brilliantly by Lionel Barrymore.)

I won’t bore you with the entire story (hopefully if you haven’t seen it, you will), but I need to advise a spoiler alert. Mr Potter is a sniveling small-minded menace who owns the biggest bank in town. He spends his day grumbling, snarling and counting his money; his goal is to get richer and richer so he can appropriate more and more of Bedford Falls. In order to do that, he needs to acquire Stewart’s small town bank that his family has been running for years. It’s the quintessential tale of the “vulture” capitalist vs the little man. 

Potter is unscrupulous; Stewart is a man with a deep ethical center. At one point, something happens that puts Stewart’s bank in jeopardy and he blames himself. He becomes so despondent that he jumps off the town’s bridge and is saved by Clarence Oddbody, an angel. (How this unfolds is quite interesting.) He pleads with Clarence to let him die and ultimately says “ I wish I was never born.” Clarence is on the scene to stop him from killing himself, his success will allow him to get his official angel wings. He’s at his wits end in his attempt to help Stewart find a way through the despair. Unsuccessful, he has a stroke of genius and decides to take Stewart up on his request and show him what the world would have been like if he was never born. If Clarence succeeds in saving Stewart he punches his ticket to heaven.

I think you get the gist of why I introduced the piece with this. Like many of you, I too feel a sense of despair. My disappointment with the American people makes me retch. I am deeply sad and feel genuinely frightened about the consequences of the power this malignant narcissist will have.

Sadly, I am not surprised by the results. We all want to believe that we are better than this result. I have said this many times: this is America. We are the most powerful country in the world, the richest and most successful, and the envy of the world. 

The world currency is based on our dollar. We are the greatest innovators. The world hungers for our culture. We are a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, democracy like no other. Throughout our history, people have sought our shores for opportunity, a better life, and often to escape oppression. We are the great experiment of democracy. We are the protector of the world and democracy. We have laws that protect free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press that many countries dream of. Much to celebrate and embrace. These things are the pillars of our belief in American exceptionalism. 

We are also the country built on the eradication of an indigenous population. We are a country that enslaved an entire people, and when finally freed, were shortly stripped of their rights through the institution of Jim Crow. Even though Blacks were free to vote, Jim Crow laws created so many obstacles that few did. Blacks really didn’t have true freedom to vote  (and thus we couldn’t be considered a true democracy) until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed. Then in 2012, in Shelby vs Holder, The Supreme Court gutted an essential element of the Act, cynically deciding that the old discrimination didn’t apply. After all, electing a Black president confirmed we were living in a “post-racial America.” Not surprisingly voter suppression increased once again disenfranchising Black voters. The freedom to vote is the thing that powers democracy; in America, countervailing forces to this day are at work to undermine it.

The differences between the haves and have-nots in our country are so out of control it is immoral. The greatest country in the world has 40 million people living in poverty. Food and housing insecurity are rampant. More women and three times as many Black women die in childbirth than almost all “developed” nations and some less developed ones as well.  Our education system is a mess and our reading and math scores are a national embarrassment. Tens of millions do not have healthcare. If we are not already living in an oligarchy, the new administration will start making us look like Russia when it comes to who owns the wealth and the power it wields. All we have to do is look at the bro-bound between The Don and Elon Musk to know what’s coming. The Supreme Court, in 2010, in “Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission”  declared:

“Corporations were people too;” as a result, an already dysfunctional political system controlled by money was put on steroids. More and more Republicans run for offices which they are totally unqualified for and pay their way to an election. Take the case of JD Vance. He was plucked out of obscurity by right wing billionaire Peter Zeil who bankrolled his senate campaign and after two years in the senate, propelled him into the office of vice president. If you recall, Vance, he wrote the forward to Project 2025.

It is sometimes very difficult to hold both sides of America. We have made steady progress toward our goal to become a true democracy where all people are created and treated equally. When we work so hard and believe we are finding a clearer ethical and moral center (like Jimmy stewart), the dark forces that are part of our history and humanity itself, pushes back with the likes of Mr. Potter. 

People looking for hope always talk about America as an experiment, an idea. MLK said “The arc  of moral justice is long, but bends toward justice.” Lincoln is famous for these words: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” But right now, in America, and frankly in many parts of the world, there is a movement toward darkness: our “Better Angel’s” wings feel like they have been clipped. Clarence has lost his way and once again we are in a battle to get our wings back. 

These are scary times. People all over the world are embracing illiberal autocracy. We of course, being “exceptional, never imagined this could happen to us. After all, we are the beacon of democracy. As Reagan said: we are the “shining light. on the hill. Our history and the results of this election confront us in a gut wrenching way to see (if we choose to really “see”) that we are not who we believe we are. 

We are in for a long fight for justice. And we are up against powerful forces that are at the very core of human nature; Desire for power, greed, dehumanization of the other, deep fears and insecurities, and at its core, a need to feel safe in a uncertain world, where there are many Mr. Potters ready to pounce, who play into the insecurities of the masses, ready to claim they are our protectors. This sows the seeds for autocracy. In many of Capra’s movies, the little guy, the people with moral centers come out on top against great odds (Watch “You can’t take it with You”, and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”). Capra believed that the forces of evil were powerful, but the human spirit and desire for decency and fairness would cause our better angels to prevail.

That is where we are poised at this moment in time. Jimmy Stewart had an angel to create his path out of the wilderness of despair. I personally don’t believe in angels (though, believe it or not, 70% of Americans do-that’s part of a bigger problem that I will get to in a subsequent piece), we are going to have to dig deep to find our way out of the despair we are feeling and discover our own better angels.