Every year at Christmastime, I just love watching that movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.

The story is about hard-working middle class George Bailey, who takes on the filthy-rich, cruel and greedy Old Man Potter.

Potter tries to control and own everything and everybody, while George spends his whole life working hard and helping others try to achieve their own dreams.

The setting is back in 1919 in Bedford Falls. It opens with prayers being sent up for George Bailey, who is in trouble after trying to do right all his life. All George ever wanted to do was grow up, get a good education, see the world and build things.

But he soon finds out that when you are born poor, life can throw curve balls at you and things don’t always work out as planned.

You see, George was an honest and humble man. Hard-working, earnest and trustworthy.

All his life, George was a victim of circumstance; fighting against, and reacting to, forces beyond his control.

On the eve of his lifelong dream of leaving his hometown to travel the world, George’s father, who by owning a small savings and loan that was the only thing preventing Potter from monopolizing the whole town and everything and everybody in it, suddenly dies and George once again steps up to assume the role that his father filled, and to save his town and his fellow man from Potter.

After more heart-wrenching events more pressure by Old Man Potter, who constantly ridiculed and mocked George in all his endeavors, George decides at one point the only way out is to commit suicide. He feels he’s worth more dead than alive.

Just in time, an angel arrives and shows George what life would be like if he had never been born. When George saw what life would be like living in Potterville, he realized that even if he was a nobody to someone like Potter, he was somebody to God and he had a great Christmas.

Fast-forward to 2011. I won’t have to watch the movie this year because it is being played out in real life.

I think you can easily visualize the parallels between Old Man Potter, represented by the Wall Street moguls, lobbyists, big business CEOs, the politicians in this country, and the poor struggling George Bailey, represented by hard-working, middle class Americans.

You see, Old Man Potter is still at it – trying to crush hard working George Bailey. Potter makes more money in one day than George will see in a lifetime.

Even so, Potter wants more. He comes up with a plan to make more money for himself. He implemented his plan, gambled and lost most of the money on Wall Street, including the people’s 401Ks, life savings and pensions. He is in trouble now.

Surely he will have to pay the money back and possibly spend some jail time! But alas, no. The courts rule that Potter has a contract that gives him huge bonuses, plus tax breaks.

So where will the money come from? Someone has to pay it back. Potter suggests that we borrow it from a foreign nation and make George pay it back.

After all, he rationalizes, George just got a 50-cent raise six years ago, and that is known as spreading the wealth around, which Potter also declares is socialism.

Now, George does not agree with this at all, but he isn’t very worried, because this is America and George also has a contract, just like Potter does, and decides to fight this decision in court.

The court rules that George’s contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. George then goes to Potter and tries to bargain with him, but Potter tells George that as far as he’s concerned, George has nothing to bargain with. Besides, Potter has it all worked out.

George is to give up half his pay, no insurance and the retirement age will be raised to 85 years; therefore he will not need a pension. All he needs is funeral expenses.

Since the end has not come yet, I can only hope that God will send another angel down to show George what it would have been like if unions had never come into existence.

We would still be living in Potterville, begging Old Man Potter for everything and just getting another day older and deeper in debt, with Potter getting richer, fatter and more powerful.

I still believe that good will triumph over evil. I heard a reporter say on TV the other day that there are some things worth fighting for, even if you lose, and I believe that we are fighting for the middle class just to survive.

There is one thing that I know for sure – one day a righteous judge will come and judge rich men and poor men alike; not by a contract written on paper with ink, but by a covenant signed and sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ.

Joe Fletcher, Sr.

Ironton