So lit out of my mind a few nights ago while watching It's a Wonderful Life, I proposed a philosophy that I was originally going to attribute to Star Trek. But the problem with Star Trek is, as science fiction, it is easily dismissible by the skeptic. I'm of course not the only person to think of creating a utopian society using it as a hook, but while I firmly believe it is possible to achieve the utopian ideal of such a society; the lack of transporters, FTL and replicators (especially the replicators) will be hand waved by those of a limited mind set as fundamental impossible.
Anyway, I'm not the first one who noticed how awesome the movie is. Indeed, here are some examples:
Reddit, Current Affairs, The Institute for Christian Socialism, the Society for US Intellectual History, the Federalist, the Mary Sue, TheSerpent'sHouse, the Stalin Loving Socialists of the Nation, and the WSJ which thinks it's pro capitalism.
But did you know that the FBI and demonic HUAC investigated the movie? They felt that it villanized capitalism and our Aristocratic Masters. You see before the 1960's, the quiet part was said more out loud that this has always been a capitalist slaver nation for capitalist slavers and the FBI existed and exists to help and serve them; not us. Indeed, a lot of the ammunition that the demonic HUAC used for their blacklists came from the LA Field Office of the FBI. They felt that because it smeared "Free enterprise" that it was subversive to "the American Dream."
Look, the fact of the matter is, that if the FBI thinks that this movie is the devil, and everyone on the left and the right wants to claim this movie or decry this movie as the devil, then maybe its worth a second look. This movie is also particularly interesting as the basis for an anti capitalist philosophy because it is unique in that it went into the public domain and was so popular that it actually GOT CLAWED BACK to make money for for profit corporations again. It went public domain in the mid seventies and then in the midninesies the people who owned the original book got that and bought the sound track and now NBC Universal owns it.
It became popular because small independent television stations could play it again and again during Christmas because it was cheap and free and it became a beloved American tradition. And at the same time, then Wall Street stuck a flag in it and made money off of it. Maybe the fact that the movie is all about not clawing things back from the public domain and that the FBI thinks is unamerican because it makes our capitalist masters look like dogshit is worth a second glance.
Star Trek is where you wanna go; Its a Wonderful Life is how you get there.
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