A viral TikTok video of Southern California restaurant customers standing and singing the Star-Spangled Banner caused many America-hating trolls to post how triggered they were, writing things like “this seems like a horror movie” and “I would be scared for my life.”
The seemingly unremarkable footage is only 14 seconds long but has over 3.5 million views and almost 600,000 likes as of this writing. The account holder, @paulinappa_0, captioned the post with the ridiculous statement, “By far the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been in.” If that’s true, she must not have ever left her house. She also added the tags #godblessamerica #getout #illegal #whitepeoplethings.
Watch the terrifying footage:
@paulinappa_0 By far the most dangerous situation I’ve ever been in #godblessamerica #getout #illegal #whitepeoplethings ♬ original sound – Paulina
Yup, that’s it, fourteen seconds of people singing, nothing more, nothing less—and yet the unpatriotic responses kept coming in:
Serious question. Is this real? Like people actually do this in real everyday life?
That’s just scary…
Good grief that’s troubling 😩
My worst nightmare
what the hell is going on 💀
There are plenty more.
Reporter Kacey McKinnon of KUSI News bravely went to the Rainbow Oaks restaurant in Fallbrook—about 50 miles from San Diego—to assess the situation, and despite the obvious dangers posed by people singing, apparently made it out alive:
The owner of the restaurant, Jeanene Paulino, appeared on “Fox and Friends” Wednesday to express her gratitude for those who have served our country.
“I feel like, if we take a few minutes out of our day to be grateful for the men and women who have made the sacrifices so that we can stand up and say how we feel and she said how she felt. And I wish she realized that it’s because those of men and women who made those sacrifices that she was able to do that, wihout any kind of fear at all,” she told hosts Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier.
The restaurant has had a tradition of singing the anthem and displaying an American flag waving on the television for years, Paulino continued. She added that she will not be deterred by the online trolling:
I come from a long line of patriots, so I was thrilled to keep the tradition going. No, we won’t be stopping.
Watch:
Asked if the TikToker and the commenters were ungrateful, Paulino said yes, they were:
Yeah, it really is ungrateful and, and that’s why we do it every day at noon. We want to remind everyone, we need to be grateful to those people and grateful God gave us a nation that we can say how we feel.
So yeah, it is pretty ungrateful.
As to the motives of the TikToker, Paulino said she posted the video for “attention” and doesn’t have “her attitude focused on the gratitude.”
Paulino’s attitude, though, is exactly right. Those who are unwilling to honor this nation and acknowledge the men and women who served before us are certainly ungrateful, but I can think of a lot of other words that I’d like to use that aren’t fit to print. This is what you get when you teach that America is bad, that we’re a terrifying inequitable racist country. I only wish we had more restaurant owners like Paulino in Southern California.
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