What would the Chinese be for ‘great leader’ in the phrase ‘our great leader’? I don’t know whether ‘da4’ is the right character to use for ‘great’ in this context, or which characters to use for ‘leader’. I found this, but I don’t know if that’s the same way it would be written in Taiwan (even leaving aside the issue of simplified/traditional characters).
I’m also uncertain whether or not the phrase ‘our great leader’ is culturally sensitive here, given the connection with the gibbering madman Mao.
wei3da4 ling3xiu4 is appropriate. Also, no matter what one may think of Mao, he was not a ‘gibbering madman’, but a highly successful and ruthless politician.
Mass starvation, idiotic economic policies, random agricultural programs displaying no practical knowledge of agriculture, civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and rabid paranoia all spell ‘gibbering madman’ to me. I’m sure he wasn’t technically insane, but I don’t believe he was remotely balanced.
He could perhaps be considered a highly successful politician if that list is what one desires from successful politicians, but I think he made a far more successful gibbering madman. But what do you expect when an ignorant peasant is in power?
Mass starvation, idiotic economic policies, random agricultural programs displaying no practical knowledge of agriculture, civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and rabid paranoia all spell ‘gibbering madman’ to me. I’m sure he wasn’t technically insane, but I don’t believe he was remotely balanced.[/quote]
That’s a rather superficial analysis of a very complicated figure and history. You’re oversimplifying Mao, like many other commentators, especially Western ones, who like to demonize the subject. They’ve done the same thing with Kim Jong-Il. ‘Gibbering madmen’ don’t last long in power. Ruthless, cunning ones can and sometimes do.
Yes I am oversimplifying, partly because I don’t believe he deserves the respect of a more scholarly treatment in a casual thread on an Internet forum, and partly because a lot of what he did was due to the fact that he was basically an ignorant peasant, and an increasingly mentally unstable one at that. Intelligent sane men do not behave as he did.
He should have been kept behind a plough all his life in a rice paddy, where he so obviously belonged.
Gibbering madmen stay in power as long as they are ruthless and cunning. These are not mutually exclusive attributes. It would be difficult to classify someone like Caligula or Idi Amin as anything but gibbering madmen, and yet they did ok. I wouldn’t classify Mugabe as particularly sane (or intelligent), and he’s still in power.
Of course, if by ‘gibbering’ you mean ‘incapable of rational communication’, or ‘mentally unfit to think or speak coherently’, I would agree. But that’s not what ‘gibbering madman’ means to me.
Yes I am oversimplifying, partly because I don’t believe he deserves the respect of a more scholarly treatment in a casual thread on an Internet forum, and partly because a lot of what he did was due to the fact that he was basically an ignorant peasant, and an increasingly mentally unstable one at that. Intelligent sane men do not behave as he did.
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about the only thing on which I agree with you is that this isn’t the thread for this discussion. Mao was quite the rational actor up until late in his life (his mental faculties started going downhill in the aftermath of the Lin Biao affair); he was anything but an ignorant peasant and accomplished practically everything he set out to achieve, with the exception of the GLF, and even after that disaster, he still managed to remain in power.
