Chairman Obama and HIS Great Leap Forward
How does western history view the generation of Germans during the second world war? Are they typically viewed as evil, by allowing the holocaust to happen, or simply as ignorant or tolerant of what was happening around them?
Sweeping generalizations are made about entire generations of people based largely on what they put up with from their leaders. How will our great-grandchildren judge us and what we tolerate from our leaders?
The Great Leap Forward
Karl Marx had a theory upon which many of the world’s leaders have based their decisions. His theory was basically that a feudalistic-type government/economy inevitably led to a capitalist system of government/economy, which inevitably led to a socialist one, which inevitably led to a communist one (which, according to Marx, was also the purest form of government).
In the late 1950s, Chairman Mao Zedong – the leader of China, decided that China had been following in the shadow of modern countries for too long, and that it was their turn again to be the great world power. In order to do this, he proposed that the entire country take a “Great Leap Forward”, bypassing capitalism entirely in the natural evolution of governments/economies, and skipping straight to Socialism. By doing this, China would be one step ahead of most of the world powers, including the United States and Japan.
Policies were enacted by Chairman Mao, and everyone was expected (or required) to participate in taking China directly to Socialism. Old views and learned people (like doctors) were shunned and even removed from their posts. Nobody was better than anybody else, and everyone was expected to contribute. Teenagers, following the cult of personality Mao Zedong had created, were placed in high positions (remember the doctors who were no longer at the hospital – they were frequently replaced by students).
Agriculture became a major focus, and Chairman Mao called for a meeting of the town and province leaders. In the meeting, goals were set on what percentage their crops would increase due to the national shift to Socialism. If you’ve never been in one of these goal setting meetings, I will explain basically how they go. The first person responds with a reasonable increase, say 10%. The next person to answer, obviously has to do better than the first (or he is a sad, “faithless” person, and shouldn’t be a leader), so he says they will have a 17% increase. The third person to respond has now caught on and responds that they will have a 25% increase. Every time someone responds, the increase becomes more ridiculous, and yet the other leaders in the room applaud the ambition. This is essentially how the meeting went with Chairman Mao and the local leaders.
Well, after a time, everyone came back to report on their progress, due to the new Socialist system. The first people to report, the ones with moderate increase estimates, reported increases in productivity that were actually greater than they had predicted. This excited everyone there, and as the leaders continued to report the increases in productivity, the numbers got extravagantly high. Some may have even reported hundreds of percent increases simply due to the shift to Socialism. Loud applause and excitement accompanied the reports.
I think as time passes, Obama will have more in common with Wilhelm II than anyone else.
And whoever comes AFTER Obama will get to be our… you get the picture.
Godwin’s drinking game! *Takes a shot*