"USA! USA! USA!" Shut UP!

The BBQ Pit
41

Christ Almighty.

I suppose I should thank you, Otto, for pulling me out of my numbed state. But you’ve so pissed me off. Normally I’m not enamoured of “USA USA” done at sporting events. But to compare trivial sports chants with the rallying cheers of those that are trying to rescue the living and retrieve our dead is beyond belief. Shame on you.

You can express your love of freedom any way you want. Let the rescuers express theirs the way they want (and need to). And let me express this:

You are an incredible twit.

42

Twelve firefighters from my Brooklyn neighborhood are presumed dead as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center. Last night, a candlelight vigil and procession was held here. Thousands of my neighbors filled the streets - talking, crying, singing God Bless America and We Shall Overcome. Three firefighters sat in their truck, looking dazed. As we walked by, they reached down to clutch our hands for a moment. These men helped rescue my coworkers. These men are heroes. These men make me proud to be an American. They can chant whatever they want.

43

Hey Otto, remember how you went the fuck away in a huff the lasttime you were an unmittigated asshole and got called on it? (As I recall, you said a poster’s username made her sound like a truckstop whore, or some such. I’ll go find it if you like–I’m sure the newer generation would find it charming.) Well, you’re being an unmittigated asshole again, so go the fuck away.

44

I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said in this thread. I just want to throw in a heartfelt FUCK YOU OTTO! If you said this IRL you would be beaten to a pulp. The only reason you said it here is to cause a scene. Congrats asshole!

45

This one’s a dropkick for me, Otto, so listen up really carefully okay?

Nobody cares if you are American. Do you understand? I’ll be glad to repeat it for you. NOBODY CARES IF OTTO IS AN AMERICAN. There. I think that probably stuck !

WHY does nobody care? I’ll tell you. This is not an American experience, it’s a human experience. Now, I have no idea who you are or what you are, or where you live. But I’ll tell you this.

I stood at Ground Zero, and aided those Firefighters who couldn’t see and breathe from the smoke and soot. I rinsed out bloodshot eyes, and gave them oxygen. They work till they drop, they sleep a bit, pull on underpants, socks, sweatpants and shirts donated by strangers who they will NEVER meet, then go back to work and do it all over again.

Now, it’s pretty obvious that you care about your hateful agenda and not about that supremely difficult effort. Hey, cool, whatever floats your selfish boat.

I do find it very sad that you chose to attack a group of humans- NOT just Americans, a group of humans who got the emotional release that they so badly needed, by chanting and cheering for their President and their country- before turning their backs on him and returning to their bitterly grim filthy awful task.

That’s who you have contempt for. You decided- FOR THEM, and FOR US- that all they were doing was acting like it was a football game.

I stood there, cocksocket. I know it’s a mass grave, okay? They are STILL standing there, doing their work and I am really almost totally SURE that they all know it’s a mass grave too !

Your distain is disrespectful, inappropriate, horrific in the extreme and most of all- misdirected. There must be another Internet message board out there where your particular brand of thinking is admired. How about if you spend some energy and find it?

Cartooniverse

46

Thanks, weirddave. I was thinking along the same lines meself.

What would you expect them to say? Polite applause? Rebel yells? “Bush, Bush, Bush?” “Four More Years” (not in a town that went for Bush 14 percent in '00).

Here’s my point. I’m gonna quote from Jessica McBride’s story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Firefighting is by tradition an occupation passed down generations. So now brothers are searching for the bodies of brothers, fathers are searching for the bodies of sons, sons are searching for the bodies of fathers.

“Three months ago, on Father’s Day, we lost three firefighters at once,” says Rick Saracelli, a bleary-eyed, mustachioed lieutenant with an eerily collected tone that seems to mask a deeper fury. “When that happened, I said it would be the worst thing I would ever see in my career. Now we’re upward of 300 or more. It really starts setting in when you start seeing it confirmed. The difference is, with three guys it’s comprehensible. This is incomprehensible, the grief.”

It’s a tradition for New York firefighters to purchase memorial T-shirts whenever a firefighter dies in the line of duty. Do they purchase 300 T-shirts now? How can they possibly fathom burying 300 of their own?

Firefighter Neil Ottrando, drinking out of a glass memorializing another long-ago fallen comrade as he sits nearby in the firehouse, considers this: “When one guy at a time dies, everyone buys a shirt for $10 and it goes to the family. This would cost a lot of money — there are too many names, so many names.”

What we got here is a case of moral authority. If anyone, anywhere, earned the right to chant USA, it’s them.

47

Otto has been justifiably dog-piled, but I just had to add a bitchslap of my own:
Fuck you criticizing those who chanted the name of their country.

48

OTTO

Did you happen to catch the looks in the firefighters’ eyes as they chanted? Did it look like they were at a homecoming parade?

If our military’s resolve, the resolve of our country, and, for that matter, the rest of the civilized world, is one tenth of that of the FDNY firefighters, then this war on terrorism will be ended sooner than later, and far fewer innocents will suffer.

One more thing, OTTO, you might want to stock up on ear plugs because I’m sure that you’ll be hearing,

"U S A! - U S A! - U S A!"

quite a bit in the future.

And one of those voices will be mine.

49

Yes, Otto, you’re right, because those people who are out there pulling the dead out of piles of rubble obviously have no idea about what it’s like when people die. You, sitting in front of your computer, have a MUCH better idea of what death is like, and what is “moral” and “right” in a situation like that.

I can’t express how much I hate you right now.

50

For years now this chant has become associated with trivial, meaningless, dubious, even dishonorable victories. It is sad that previous events have created such a connection between the name of our nation and the less mature attitudes found in that nation, and it is even more sad that as a result of that, when pride and identification with our country is appropiate and justified, when we would hope that that chant would remind us of our unity, it instead reminds us of all the times in the past when we invoked that unity for frivolous reasons. Like the boy who cried “wolf” when there was no wolf, and found that when there really was a wolf, the villagers were angry at him rather than glad for the warning, Americans find some people angry at them when they use the chant of “USA! USA! USA!”, and do not understand why. I too cringed when I heard this chant, especially when I heard it from a local crowd, come from their comfortable suburban houses and without days of rescue work to explain their actions. But I am more angry with the people that have, through decades of obnoxious behavior, trivialized the name of my nation than with those that have reminded me of that trivialization. I hope that Otto, instead of getting annoyed at these people that have earned the right to call themselves Americans, gets angry at the next group of people who, simply because they come from the same geographic area as a talented team of athletes, imply that they somehow share their victory. I hope that in the future “USA!” comes to mean more than just “We’re better than you are, hah hah hah.”

51

For what it’s worth, I couldn’t agree with you more. I, too, cringed when I first heard the chant: my initial, spontaneous reaction was “Oh God no! Not again! Now is definitely not the time!”. But then I told myself that, unlike the countless occasions where it had been used in the past as an expression of what some would qualify as a chauvinistic attitude, this time was different. The cry came straight from the gut, it was heartfelt, it was a legitimate outlet for pent-up frustrations and understandable anger.

It’s a question of perspective. Otto’s is obviously at variance with that of most of the Dopers who posted here. It doesn’t making un-patriotic or un-American. I’m sure he hurts as much as you do.

But that’s just my humble opinion.

52

First off, FUCK YOU!!

and your disgusting fucking thread title.

How in fucking world did you get up the nerve to post something so incredibly thoughtless at a time like this?

Asshole! You make me ill.

53

“USA ain’t nothing to fuck with!!!”

(from Wu Tang Clan)

How’s that Otto??

54

For what’s it worth…the “International Firefighters Memorial” which really only honors Canadian and American firefighters held their annual service today here in Colorado Springs. There was no cheering it was a very somber service – especially given the situation in New York. Over 300 have lost their lives, presumably.

The rescue workers and firefighters need to feel a sense of unity and love and a sense that the job they do is for the good of the world. People that poopoo the idea they chant or scream to unify them more really makes me sad.

Otto, visit the memorial services next year and tell me that the chanting to rally the group was a bad thing. What normally will take several years to fill only ONE slab of the memorial will take up three slabs, just for those men and women that have perished.

Think before you speak and stop being such an ass. I don’t hate you, I hate your message to us that your beliefs are more important than the rallying of people that are doing some of the worst and most horrific duties ever known in our country.

55

Techchick my dear, you have just struck upon the most pluperfect of solutions. If indeed Otto is just aflame in self-righteousness, and does indeed believe with all of his heart in the O.P. that he used to start this thread, then what you wrote is ALMOST right on the target.

Permit me to alter it only slightly, using a lot of your words? Let’s try this on for size, m’kay?

Otto, visit the memorial services next year with printouts of your O.P. Hand them out to everyone you see who is wearing white gloves, or is weeping, or who is wearing an EMS uniform. ( I the pacifist want a shot at you, dickwad. I’ll be in the same uniform that I wore with pride for the two days I was there ). Make sure you stand on a box, and read in a loud ringing voice of moral outrage. Read the entire O.P., since it is all clearly what you believe in your heart and soul. Make sure everyone at the memorial hears you and understands you..

Then let’s all see just how fast you can run. Oh, wait. You feel you’re so sure of your position that you won’t need to flee in the face of what you have said and done?

I can’t wait. You loathesome twisted man you. What a despicable mind, to equate this with a hockey game. :mad:

Cartooniverse

56

I notice a not-so-subtle lack of response from Otto. Why is it that assholes always run away when they’re wrong?

57

It’s just the nature of the thing. When shit flies, assholes run. And vice-versa, I reckon.

58

USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA! USA!

59

Stop it, Tretiak.

Otto hates that.

60

The only thing he can do in returning to this thread is to recant all his former venom. Then, he’d be wrong (not that – anything but that!). Maybe our calling him out will get his righteousness up in a sufficient dander for him to return here and recant. Or maybe not.

Otto must have really thought his position was fairly widely held. What kind of people walk this earth?

BTW, the “USA” chant at athletic events is 100% OK by me. I’m proud of this nation, myself. For an American to get offended by the “USA” chant is to me equivalent to someone liking the taste of feces. Just how can you?