'U-S-A ... U-S-A!'

Our U.S women spoke more powerfully than our abusive, loudmouth president, or some dumb, nationalistic chant ever will

I’m a bit sad that the Winter Olympics are over, but downright joyful I won’t be hearing that stupid, meaningless “U-S-A, U-S-A …” chant every evening while watching the games.

It should have been retired many decades ago shortly after its birth in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.

That’s the year a bunch of pimply-faced American kids knocked off the vaunted Big Red Russian hockey machine on their way to winning gold, 4-3, in what is now referred to as the Miracle on Ice.

As that American amateur men’s team, composed of college kids, and recent grads, skated to one victory after another, it became clear something special was happening in that northern New York town tucked hard in the middle of the Adirondacks.

Our country was in desperate need of a spark that made us all feel good about ourselves and brought us together, even if we really didn’t know it at the time.

We were being suffocated by bad news, and a malaise that President Jimmy Carter eloquently addressed in a memorable speech a year earlier. Carter called it a “crisis of confidence” in America that struck “at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.”

Even if the speech received positive reviews from much of the American public, they weren’t ready to fully concede they were at least partly to blame for their own problems.

In addition to rotten economic conditions in 1980, there were gas lines, a hostage crisis in Iran, the stink of Watergate, and the shadow of a long, terrible war in Vietnam that had ended tens of thousands of American lives, while wrecking millions more.

There was trash in our streets, and smog menacingly hung over our cities just daring the sun to try to break through.

I became a Navy vet early that year, and couldn’t even find a job pumping that gas. I finally found work digging graves, and mowing the grass around the freshly planted headstones in a cemetery for $4.75 an hour, which pretty well summed up the state of things in the country I served.

When the 1980 Winter Olympics came along, we were all ready for a diversion, and the inspiring kids on that hockey team grandly served one up.

America finally had something to feel good about, no matter how fleeting. As their victories piled up so too did the chants, “U-S-A, U-S-A ...” which grew from a whisper to a thunderous affirmation.

It was nice to feel good about something again, so we embraced it, and rode it as long as it would go. That team provided a shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, if we all came together we could still accomplish improbably wonderful things in America.

Unfortunately, the “U-S-A” chant lasted far longer than the good times, and has been cheapened through the years, as America has engaged in more wars, wrecked more of its families, and rewarded the rich at expense of the poor and middle class.

By the terrible 2016 presidential election the USA collapsed under the weight of its bloated hubris, and is still trying to get back up.

That once inspiring chant is no longer remotely genuine, and just comes off as phony, nationalistic garbage used to drown out all the bad, instead of amplifying anything good.

We are a ghastly country that is at war with our allies, and our own citizens. We are back to indiscriminately polluting our air and water, and women have fewer rights than they did when America won that hockey game in 1980.

We have a lewd, misogynistic, racist president backed by a party of hyenas who are busy picking the bones of anything good and decent in America.

When American Jack Hughes blasted the puck past the Canadian goalie Sunday giving our boys a 2-1 win, I cheered. I was happy for them, but not for us, because I knew — just KNEW — what was coming next.

Sure enough, while the USA team celebrated in the locker room they were joined by our creepy FBI Director Kash Patel, which should be as bizarre to read as it was to type.

But it got worse, because that is what the USA does these days.

While spraying beer on himself, the rat-eyed Patel embarrassingly acted the part of some punk 18-year-old at an all-night kegger, jumping around like an over-served frat boy on the taxpayers’ dime.

While America burns, one of its chief law enforcement officers was partying with kids half his age.

And because things always get worse, Patel connected the team with Donald Trump’s nuclear-powered cell phone, which he uses to depict Black Americans as apes, and himself as some rotting, orange paragon of virtue.

Trump gushed as only he can about himself and finally the team. He invited them to his State of the Union address Tuesday — which I wouldn’t watch with somebody else’s eyes — before snidely telling them:

“I must tell you, we’re going to have to bring the women’s team. You do know that. I do believe I’d probably be impeached [if the women’s team wasn’t invited].”

Such a role model. Such class.

Predictably, the misogynistic pig hadn’t bothered calling the U.S. women’s hockey team, after they had also defeated Canada, 2-1, only three days earlier.

For Trump, his assault on the U.S. men’s locker room provided a daily-double: He could play the part of the lurid 79-year-old, male gasbag in front of a bunch of impressionable young men, while also taking a direct shot at the women.

Well, this afternoon, the women politely alerted the White House they would not be accepting any invitations to the State of the Union, because apparently they have a firm grip of what the state of our union really is right now.

And that important statement resonates far more loudly than any meaningless “U-S-A ... U-S-A” chant ever will.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

(That’s an incredible AP photo of the U.S. women after their emotional victory over Canada to win the gold medal in the just-completed Winter Olympics.)