Baileyism - We Bid Bedford Falls Goodbye

I want to write a book about this. In a better world, this was my ticket to honorary PhDs and a chance to become a great philosopher of the ages. The philosophers of old certainly didn't have fancy degrees any more than George Bailey did, but is there any doubt in your mind that the man was a scholar? A would-be founding father who found his time and place in a little realm called Bedford Falls. In a better world than ours—one that didn't throw away Obama's grassroots network, or let hanging chads decide an election, or fail to contest every precinct in Florida rather than let that man get away with his transparent cheating—in that world, this philosophy might have inspired people to give a damn in ways that don't require guns pointed by the government. I think, just like in It's a Wonderful Life, we need government, but we need to do more than that right now. 

But the problem is that the George Baileys of the world are fighting the real battle of Bedford Falls right now; they're protecting their neighbors from ICE raids and protesting pro-Nazi businesses. They're sheltering their neighbors, or if religious, doing actually Christian things like working at food kitchens and soup lines for the poor. The fact of the matter is, what we need right now is more... Monte Cristoism. So we say farewell to what could have been, and begin to move into what we need now. 

I have put the seed of the idea of this wonderful movie becoming a real thing for the world out there for you. And like Momma Dollar and Poppa Dollar I genuinely believe that not only can it be so but that the people who made the movie hoped their art to inspire it to be. There is nothing whistful about the movie in the slightest. But for now, in our time, the Bailey Buliding and Loan has served its purpose and now I think I just heard a knock on my cell door in le Chateu de If.