Stupid Americans think they are the center of the universe.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 2:23 am

Maybe you guys can turn this into an ongoing theme or something. I don't care, I just stumbled across something so dumb I had to post it.

So this guy, Sir Nicholas Winton apparently saved a whole bunch of Jewish Czechslovakian children by smuggling them to the UK. And then 50 years later, the bring him on some show about it, and the surprise gotcha moment is that all the living children they could get were also brought on and were sitting all around him. The show was apparently in 1989. The broadcaster is unmistakably British. The guy is named Sir Nicholas Winton. The Jewish Czechs were smuggled to Britain.

The very first comment is "Not just the 600 plus owe their lives, but also their children and grandchildren.....it goes on to thousands that owe this man. Wow...what a legacy. God Bless America!"

For fucks sake. Really?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:37 am

Why were you reading youtube comments?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:49 am

Because he takes the graffiti on public restroom walls seriously?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:51 am

fectin wrote:Why were you reading youtube comments?

It was literally the first one, I didn't read any farther, but it was in the picture while I watched the video.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 5:07 am

To me, "god bless America" just sounds like a general-purpose statement of emotional intensity, much the same way as people in the past might have said "God's wounds" and we today might say "well slap my ass and call me Susan." It's not intended to suggest that this particular incident will cause America's favour with the Great Big GM In The Sky to rise and/or fall.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 5:42 am

Yeah, from the thread title I expected a takedown of American Exceptionalism or at least some Cato/Heritage foundinstitute gobbledygook about how leading the world in medical bankruptcies gives us the best healthcare or something similar.

What I got was an ignorant youtube comment that I could actually make a defense for in historical context -- if there were in fact any point at all to trying to defend ignorant youtube comments. I am dissapoint.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 7:15 pm

Even if the comment wasn't posted merely to troll, it's just a stupid YouTube comment. You might as well complain that your tea tastes like leaves soaked in hot water - it's pretty much what you'd have to expect. YouTube comments = stupidity.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 7:53 pm

Okay, since apparently this needs to be said, for god knows what reason.

Hey you, idiots. Yeah, you the idiots who are mad at me for posting about a comment. Stop being idiots.

When I say, "Hey this dumb thing I saw on the internet was so funny I had to bring it up" here are some things I do not mean:

1) This comment is vitally important to the universe, and I read it because I think it was important.
2) I think this comment isn't stupid.

Hey. Idiots. I just saw something funny on the internet and wanted to mention it. For fucks sake. Do you whine like bitches every single time someone posts an image in the images thread? If I had screencapped the page instead of copy pasting would that magically have made you into not idiots?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 8:10 pm

On one hand, I often use "God Bless America" in an abstract, often ironic way, often to mean something along the lines of "look at this magnificent edifice of idiocy". On the other, the rest of that comment really doesn't support that usage.

And yes, "why were you reading YouTube comments???" but I certainly also end up reading the top one when it's onscreen, and reacting.

I've certainly encountered a lot of stupid Americans that think they're the center of the universe, and it's not all that hard for me to believe this is one.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 8:45 pm

I think, Kaelik, since you made a new thread to point this out it makes is seem like is was more important than it was and could have been put in the Youtube thread.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 10:42 pm

You guys are missing a key piece of Kaelik's post. The fact that it's in his sig means this is understandable, but it really needs to be recognized:

DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

Kaelik gets his kicks by raging at things online (more or less. I'm sure he'll call me an idiot over some slight inaccuracy in that statement, for which I can only say "I'm glad I'm contributing to your entertainment, Kaelik).

But seriously, I get both sides here. The comment was a fucking monument to stupidity, and needs mocking. But it was also a comment on youtube, and may have just been trolling.

It actually shows remarkable restraint that Kaelik decided to mock it here, rather than insulting the commenter's genetic lineage on youtube.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 3:42 am

I gots one. It happens in many movies, but for some reason Independence Day sticks out in my head. Could just as well be Armageddon or whatever, but for me, ID4.

Anywho, world under existential threat and it is up to the Americans to save the pot. Does this tired trope stick in the craw of non-USers, or is it just accepted as the cost of doing business for movies made in the US for a US audience primarily.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 3:47 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4kBr3xdH2w#t=0m23s

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:23 am

Allah Akbar

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 7:07 am

There's only one thing that really shits me, and that's World War 2. Actually, I imagine WW2 pissed quite a few people off, but that's not what I mean. There are two countries that still masturbate with pride over the role they played: Britain and the US.

Britain did it because "beating France/Germany at something" is basically the kind of thing they base their whole world view around and without giving Jerry "a damn good thrashing" they are nothing. Mind you, I can at least point to what England did in the European side of things.

The US... I don't really understand their fascination with the Euro side of the war and insistence on having won it ("If it weren't for us Americans you'd be speaking German." "You overestimate our ability to learn other languages, I assure you!"), seeing as their big battle was in the Asia-Pacific region, against Japan. The fall of Germany really came down to Russia (with several other countries providing assistance at ringside), along with their unfortunate situation where Italy unfriended them.

This is putting aside the bit where the people that take such pride are maybe 30-40 and they seem to insist that they personally won the war back then before they were born.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 8:15 am

The US invasion of Italy and France is a pretty big deal. That being said, the Russians also constantly masturbate to their contribution to World War 2. In all cases, I think it's basically fair. The US, the UK, and the USSR teamed up and fought the biggest war in history against the biggest villains in history and saved civilization in a very real way. And even though all three empires did some pretty shitty things along the way, it's actually one of the least morally complicated conflicts in all of human history. Russians, Americans, and Brits wave their dicks around about it, but they have a right to.

-Username17

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 8:45 am

That, but it's also important to remember that without American support Brittan would have been able to do somewhere between jack and shit about Germany. Brittan was pretty much on the ropes by the time Germany attacked Russia they were having trouble replenishing their military resources so America gave, not sold, gave them supplies even before entering the war because Roosevelt wanted to fight the nazis really hard but the American people did not want another war. After entering the war the additional troops and supplies allowed the allied forces to exert meaningful pressure on Germany from both sides and without that it would have been much more difficult for the USSR to push the German war machine back. Not impossible, no one has ever won a war against Russia on their home turf, for good reason, but not a sure bet.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 8:45 am

FrankTrollman wrote:The US invasion of Italy and France is a pretty big deal. That being said, the Russians also constantly masturbate to their contribution to World War 2. In all cases, I think it's basically fair. The US, the UK, and the USSR teamed up and fought the biggest war in history against the biggest villains in history and saved civilization in a very real way. And even though all three empires did some pretty shitty things along the way, it's actually one of the least morally complicated conflicts in all of human history. Russians, Americans, and Brits wave their dicks around about it, but they have a right to.

-Username17

In the words of a wise man.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 8:54 am

I guess that's fair enough. And I was not aware that Russians did the same. I'll never know what it's like, given how Australia basically never plays a proper "important" role in a war, just sending a bunch of men out to be part of someone else's force like using the Allied Detachment rules in 40k.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 12:48 pm

In New Zealand "we" celebrate where English officers sent a bunch of conscript boys up a hill in a neutral country and then left them there running at machine guns for nine months simply because the gentleman whose idea it all was didn't want to admit it was a bad one. Compared to the 1st Somme or similar battles it's a bit of nothing, which in turn are peanuts compared to Stalingrad where a ... lot of people died.

Wikipedia says 2.7 million German soldiers died on the eastern front, mostly in '43, and from then they were conscripting the infirm, old men, and boys. Russia crushed the Wehrmacht as they had to, the official German policy was to clear the area of sub-humans to provide more space for Ayrians to live in. 'S not subtle. They had a lot of help, but it was Russia that defeated the Nazis, just as the US defeated Japan. Britain was a landing strip, they lost far more men in WWI.

Otherwise, what Koumei said, only NZ's a detachment of the Aus detachment.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 3:00 pm

ww2 is also the last real war that the US won, unless you use very very loose definitions of "war" and "win"

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:12 pm

Koumei wrote: The US... I don't really understand their fascination with the Euro side of the war and insistence on having won it ("If it weren't for us Americans you'd be speaking German." "You overestimate our ability to learn other languages, I assure you!"), seeing as their big battle was in the Asia-Pacific region, against Japan.

That's not actually true. While the US was the member of the Allies most significantly involved in the Pacific, the invasion of Western Europe had priority once it got underway.

It's also not like Russia gets to claim all the credit even for the Eastern Front. Without the Lend-Lease program they'd have been out many tanks (they made their own, but generals do not, as a rule, pass up free tanks) and a large portion of their transportation capacity. Also, the strategic bombing campaigns did quite a number on Nazi military production. If you added all the stuff deployed on the Western Front, the USSR would have been in serious trouble.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:24 pm

Guderian wrote in his postwar book Panzer Leader that it was pretty clear from 1941 onwards that the invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed and that Germany would not win the war. The thing he rated as most important was the Soviet ability to produce immense numbers of tanks very cheaply and pour them into mobile battles on the steppe where the German lines were stretched too thin to respond effectively.

Guderian was the father of tank warfare, so I sort of trust his judgement on the matter.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:32 pm

You don't just need tanks for tank warfare. The US provided a lot of the transportation necessary to keep those tanks supplied.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Jul 08, 2014 11:01 pm

Koumei wrote:The US... I don't really understand their fascination with the Euro side of the war and insistence on having won it

The war in Europe ended with U.S. and Soviet troops shacking hands, the war on the Pacific ending with a mushroom cloud. It's harder to celebrate the latter without looking like an asshole.