[ExI] hero worship

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

snip

> I read two posters who commented about expecting a POTUS to be a descent respectable person, someone the young people might emulate and admire.  Then something occurred to me: both of those posters were older than I am.  In the most attitude-formative years of my generation, Nixon became entangled in the Watergate scandal and was personally vilified.

The current situation makes a lot of people who lived through those
times yearn for the honesty of Richard Nixon.

> People of my generation came to expect that POTUS was a bad person, which led many of us into libertarianism,

You might be right on this point, but I don't think so.  I have known
hundreds of libertarians, L5 Society was at least 80%.  Close to all
of them were memetically infected by either Ayn Rand (Randroids) or
Robert Heinlein (Space Cadets).  I can't think of any I know from
those days who became libertarians (or Libertarians) as a result of
being disgusted with conventional political hanky panky.

Of course libertarianism (and extreme version, objectivism) is not a
political philosophy that is compatible with elements of evolutionary
psychology such as Hamilton's rule.  I remember a discussion with one
of the more rabid examples where he claimed it was the right thing (if
given a choice) to kill the entire human race off if that was what it
took for him to live.  Hamilton's rule indicates that you should be
willing to sacrifice your life if doing so saves enough copies of your
genes.

> certainly into not expecting POTUS to be a descent person.

That's really sad.  It bodes a really grim future for this country.

> With the possible exceptions of Gerald Ford and to some extent Jimmy Carter, every one of their successors were flawed in some fairly significant way.

All people are flawed in some way, but at least they were fairly competent.

> Think about the American children who have come of age in the last few years: they will develop attitudes which will last a lifetime.  They will never look to POTUS, probably no entertainers nor sports stars as heroes.

How do you stretch this to entertainers and sports stars?

Keith