Why Nations Rise When Leaders Dare to Be Misunderstood

History does not move at the speed of public opinion. It moves at the pace of imagination, courage, and execution. Every major leap in human progress has followed the same pattern. A small group of thinkers see beyond the present constraints. They articulate ideas that sound irrational to their contemporaries. They are mocked, resisted, and dismissed. Then, quietly and often painfully, their ideas begin to work. By the time success becomes obvious, the skeptics have either fallen silent or rewritten their own memories.

Professor Robert Goddard occupies a special place in this long tradition of misunderstood visionaries. In the early twentieth century, while the intellectual world was still debating the boundaries of the universe, Goddard was working in near isolation at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, attempting to answer a question few people took seriously. Could a machine built by human hands escape Earth’s gravity and travel into space.

This was not a poetic question. It was a technical one grounded in physics, mathematics, and engineering. Yet the idea was so far removed from common experience that even trained scientists rejected it. Goddard’s colleagues laughed at him. His experiments were ridiculed. The notion that a rocket could function in a vacuum was considered absurd. In 1920, the New York Times famously mocked him, asserting that rockets could not operate without air to push against.

The ridicule reached such intensity that the phrase Goddard’s Folly entered popular discourse. Rocket science became shorthand for impossibility. The idea that humans could leave Earth was treated not as a serious scientific proposition but as a fantasy.

What Goddard possessed was not arrogance but foresight. He understood that new realities are not born from consensus but from experimentation. He grasped that physics does not negotiate with public opinion. Gravity does not vote. Thrust does not respond to mockery. If the equations were right and the engineering precise, the rocket would rise whether people believed in it or not.

History sided with Goddard. Within decades, rockets became central to national security, scientific discovery, and human identity. By 1961, Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth. In 1969, humans walked on the Moon. By the late twentieth century, robotic explorers were crossing the solar system.

In 1969, nearly half a century after its original article, the New York Times issued a quiet apology, admitting that Goddard had been right all along.
The apology came too late to comfort Goddard, but it affirmed a timeless truth. Vision is often invisible to those trapped inside the present.

This pattern is not confined to science. It repeats itself in economics, governance, and national development. Countries do not transform by accident. They do so because leaders are willing to pursue paths that appear uncomfortable, disruptive, or politically risky in the short term but necessary in the long run.

Kenya today stands at precisely such a moment.
President William Ruto has articulated a long term national ambition to move Kenya from a developing economy into a globally competitive one by 2055. This is not a slogan. It is a structural proposition. It implies rethinking production, exports, energy, infrastructure, human capital, governance, and fiscal discipline. It demands patience from citizens and political courage from leadership.
Predictably, the response has been ridicule.

Critics focus on politics rather than policy. They ask who benefits today rather than what the nation becomes tomorrow. They dismiss long term planning as unrealistic. They confuse disruption with failure and discomfort with collapse. Much like Goddard’s critics at Clark University, they see only the limitations of the present and assume those limitations define the future.

This is a superlative analytical error.
Every successful development story has involved a period when the majority believed the strategy was impossible. Singapore in the 1960s was a small, resource poor island with ethnic tensions and no hinterland. Lee Kuan Yew’s insistence on industrial discipline, anti corruption measures, and long term state planning was deeply unpopular. Many believed Singapore would fail. Today it stands as a global benchmark.
China’s transformation under Deng Xiaoping followed the same arc. In 1978, China was impoverished and ideologically rigid. Deng’s decision to open the economy, attract foreign investment, and prioritize productivity over dogma was attacked from all sides. Yet by maintaining focus on outcomes rather than applause, China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and redefined its global position.

What unites these examples with Goddard is not personality but method. Visionary change relies on three pillars. First, a clear diagnosis of structural weakness. Second, a willingness to adopt solutions that disrupt existing comfort zones. Third, the patience to endure criticism until results speak.
President Ruto’s policy framework reflects this logic. Emphasis on production rather than consumption challenges a political culture accustomed to distribution without growth. Focus on infrastructure, energy, agriculture, and manufacturing confronts a mindset that prefers quick political wins over slow national gains. Efforts to formalize the economy and broaden the tax base attract hostility precisely because they expose long ignored realities.

These policies sound harsh to those who benefit from inefficiency. They appear unrealistic to those who have never seen disciplined transformation. The fact is that this does not make them wrong. It makes them threatening to entrenched habits.

There is also a deeper psychological element at play. Many critics are not rejecting policy details. They are rejecting the very idea that Kenya can become something fundamentally different. This is the same mental barrier that made space travel seem impossible in 1920. When imagination is limited, ambition feels arrogant.

Science teaches us that systems change when thresholds are crossed. Water does not gradually become steam. It transforms at a specific point. Development follows a similar pattern. Nations do not inch their way into prosperity. They cross structural thresholds in productivity, governance, and technology. Until those thresholds are crossed, progress feels invisible. Afterwards, it feels inevitable.

This is why early stages of transformation are the most contested. The costs are visible. The benefits are distant. The politics are noisy. It is precisely at this stage that leadership must resist distraction.

Opposition figures who focus on ridicule instead of alternatives and better solutions repeat a familiar historical role. They are the colleagues who laughed at Goddard. They are the skeptics who mocked Noah of the Bible when he was building the ark. They are not villains. They are prisoners of the present and psychological hostages of their own shortcomings.

Future generations will judge this moment differently. When Kenya’s infrastructure base supports competitive industry, when exports expand, when technology and logistics integrate the economy into global value chains, the debates of today will seem small and unserious. Young Kenyans will struggle to understand why long term planning was once controversial.They will think that those who resisted or mocked the new ideas weren’t that smart.

This does not mean policy should be immune to critique. On the contrary, rigorous debate strengthens execution. But critique must engage substance, not sabotage. It must refine vision, not deny possibility.
The true danger is not failure. The true danger is timidity.

If Goddard had listened to his critics, humanity would still be staring at the sky with wonder but no means of reaching it. If Lee Kuan Yew had surrendered to populism, Singapore would be a footnote. If Deng Xiaoping had bowed to ideological comfort, China would not be a global power.

Kenya’s future will be shaped not by applause but by endurance. President Ruto’s task is not to convince everyone today. It is to build systems that work tomorrow. History rewards those who build despite laughter.It rewards who insist on focus against the noise of detractors.

Goddard did not argue with mockery. He built rockets.
That is the lesson.

Fwamba is a political commentator