An epiphany is a moment of utter revelation when previously confused subjects suddenly become clear. The moment the grand-opening curtain fell from the ObamaCare project was a time of stunning enlightenment when, in a flash, every important aspect of Barack’s character, agenda, and method suddenly came into focus.
And the summary? Barack is clueless, a huckster, an utter fraud, a talentless grifter, the living apotheosis of the Peter Principle—literally incapable of leadership. Virtually every idea Barack has attempted is either impossible or has failed upon inception. Further, his tenure is a grave danger to the future of the American nation and the lack of a movement for his removal is the strongest argument that USA will eventually fall.
But Barack is certainly not the only failed Leftist leader who created a future vision out of cotton candy and sugar cubes. In fact, every notable socialist or Marxist leader left a train of destruction and utter chaos in his wake. What is the reason for this? Folks on the Left will certainly have their explanations. Perhaps it is because chasing the goals of Marx is the closest modern pursuit of the ideas which motivated the medieval fixation on alchemy—attempting to convert garbage into gold. What is described below is a failure of ideology, using both Barack and the hero of his staff—Chairman Mao Zedong—as an example of the pitfalls of ideologically driven, fact blind, revolutionary change.
I. Obama Has No Idea What He is Doing
It is perhaps the most obvious conclusion in history to declare that Obama does not know what he is doing as president. When pondering how Barack allowed his signature piece of legislation, the perversely titled Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare,” to overwhelmingly fail in plain sight, it is utterly incomprehensible. The options are not attractive to Barack boosters. Either he did not know the website for ObamaCare was non-functional, and therefore he is not in touch with the designers and builders of his own greatest legislation. Or, he knew it was simply a cardboard approximation, and went ahead and steered the boat of state directly into failure, anyway. Either option paints Barack as a pompous dolt.
It’s inconceivable, even if the government websites and programming of ObamaCare are somehow resurrected by a hi-tech wizard, that his reputation as a competent leader could survive. Who in their right mind would repeat Barack’s early reputation as the genius of the age? In fact, his listlessly incompetent performance is downright disturbing. Even stranger was his seeming capitulation to the state of the broken website as if it were no big deal and should simply be accepted with a shrug and a smile. Peggy Noonan’s article mentions Barack’s weird lack of a commitment to excellence in her essay, ObamaCare Is Taking On Water: It’s not just a buggy website, it’s a disaster of Titanic proportions. She says, “It is disorienting to not see this in a president. It is another thing about this story that feels not only historic, but historically strange.”
Instead, the ObamaCare collapse simply illustrates what his critics have said from day one—that Barack is an untrained ideologue who is so green to leadership he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Virginia Postrell writes on this astounding phenomenon:
The HealthCare.gov website is a disaster—symbolic to Obamacare opponents, disheartening to supporters, and incredibly frustrating to people who just need to buy insurance. Looking back, it seems crazy that neither the Barack Obama administration nor the public was prepared for the startup difficulties.
Recall, it was not long ago that Obama was touted as a messiah-like character, fit for hosannas and praise. A song witten for him was famously sung by a children’s choir, composed of a diverse squad of urchins, and featured on Youtube (We’re Gonna Change the World video). The hymn started with:
We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em.
We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
This is not far from the tales told in the book The Miracles of Chairman Mao. The book is described here,
The stories this compendium contains are so wonderfully bizarre that I must share a selection. Thus, a girl who had been deaf and dumb for years suddenly burst into song under the inspiration of Chairman Mao. In another case, a patient with a tumour weighing 45 kilograms was attended by doctors who had devotedly read their Great Leader’s Little Red Book. The operation they conducted was inspired by Mao’s statement, “Attack dispersed, isolated enemy forces first; attack concentrated, strong enemy forces later.” Accordingly, the surgeons first removed the tissues surrounding the tumour before tackling the tumour itself. At hand to help them were the hospital staff, who carried portraits of Mao even as they offered blood to the patient. As for the patient herself, when she regained consciousness, she felt her tummy to find the tumour had disappeared. The first words she now uttered were, “Long live Chairman Mao! Chairman Mao has saved me!”
II. Barack & Mao’s Revolutionary Incompetence: Great Leaps Backward
Believe it, or not, Barack has some things in common with other Leftist leaders, such as Chairman Mao Zedong. The main trait Obama shares with Mao is both have an overwhelming enthusiasm to change the world in areas of which they have no knowledge. Further, both seem incapable of taking a realistic or educated view of what they wanted to change.
For example, consider Chairman Mao’s famous program The Great Leap Forward, a policy which might be the largest failure in the history of government. Moreover, scholar Frank Dikötter states in Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, that the Chairman’s program may have cost the lives of over 45 million Chinese during its execution. Mao repeatedly made uneducated, ill-advised and plain stupid decisions which decimated a generation of China’s farmers. And he seems to have had no sense of sorrow or regret for the innocent people who died. Further, his resentment at the criticism set off by his decisions appears to have been a main motivation behind the Cultural Revolution, which killed millions more. Writes Dikötter,
Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake Britain in less than fifteen years. By unleashing China’s greatest asset, a labour force counted in the hundreds of millions, Mao thought he could catapult his country past its competitors…converting a backward economy into a modern communist society of plenty for all. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised, as villagers were herded together in giant communes which heralded the advent of communism. People in the countryside were robbed of their work, their homes, their land, their belongings and their livelihood. Food, distributed by the spoonful in collective canteens according to merit, became a weapon to force party compliance. Irrigation campaigns forced up to half the villagers to work for weeks on end on giant water-conservancy projects, often far from home, without adequate food and rest. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives.
Dikötter mentions other unbelievable losses, including of the natural world. Up to half the trees in some provinces were sacrificed to the Great Leap. Thousands of miles of canals were created, many handmade by peasants, but because they were built without educated guidance, they were mostly unusable. Moreover, perhaps 40% of Chinese homes were destroyed. Says Dikötter, “We know that Mao was the key architect of the Great Leap Forward, and thus bears the main responsibility for the catastrophe that followed.”
Much like Mao’s failed program, Barack’s apparent failure with ObamaCare includes an inability to get the number right. Says Dikötter, “The planned economy required huge inputs of accurate data, yet at every level targets were distorted, figures were inflated and policies which clashed with local interests were ignored.” ObamaCare has a similar problem, according to MNSBC, with a refusal to give accurate numbers of enrollees, and an overall failure to admit how bad the system is. Barack’s administration is accused of lying, obfuscations, and incompetence—much like Mao!
We ought to, in good conscience, recall how easy it is to harm innocent persons with well-meaning programs which end up being destroyed by unintended bad consequences.
III. Why Alchemy Never Works
The government is a necessary watchdog. But it makes a dreadful and impossibly jealous God. And politicians make for misleading messiahs. In fact, anyone who allows himself to be sold as the savior or genius of the age needs to become immediately suspect as a wanna be tyrant. When would-be leaders offer us something for free which we know will cost money and labor, we ought to be disciplined enough to reject this fake political alchemy. There is no free lunch.
Eric Hoffer, in his classic study of mass movements, explains the psychology behind the rise of political idols. The underlying motivation is an amorphous hope for change. Consider the mass of disconsolate Obamatons who arose to follow Barack when he suddenly appeared, while pondering Hoffer’s observations in The True Believer. Hoffer stated, “The technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.”
Hoffer also wrote,
“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement. By renouncing individual will, judgment and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an eternal cause, they are at last lifted off the endless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment.”
Conclusion
Although Barack has failed, Americans still need to pick up the pieces and begin to rebuild our shattered republic. Let us hope we can once again find the educated and principled leaders for this crucial task. And let Americans never again fall for the charms of a progressive ne’er-do-well who promises to take garbage and change it into gold.