A geology professor named Jon Cummings at Cal State Hayward. Why? Consider this: An earthquake struck while he was lecturing. A friend looked down the hall and Prof H. was standing in the doorway (a safer place in an earthquake). Prof. W was standing in the doorway. Professor M. was standing in the doorway. Professor Cummings was standing in the doorway enthusiastically lecturing about the earthquake.

Can I say I kinda miss Bill Clinton? Maybe it's just nostalgia, but in those days, HTTPS was still optional, Phoenix/Firebird was still fast and ad-free, HTML was simple, technology was still full of wonder and optimism, the middle class still existed, the federal budget was balanced, the Supreme Court wasn't so corrupt, civil war wasn't imminent, presidents could form complete sentences, and the worst national security threat we faced was a blowjob.

I can't really recall any good examples of leadership after that, either politically or in the corporate world. After that, it seemed like good citizenship had mostly been replaced by greed and selfishness and empty rhetoric. Nationbuilding was replaced by divisive dog whistles.

As a society (US), I don't think we're really producing great leaders anymore. Makes me think of a game of Civilization where all the golden ages were dozens of turns ago, when we first got tanks and our enemies still had spears. That was the last time we saw a Great Person. After that our palace got fancier but all our citizens are unhappy and production is stalled and pollution is leaking left and right and our tank has barely improved and our enemies negotiated all the raw materials between themselves and are mostly just waiting for us to bleed out.

It would be cool to have someone to look up to again.