Jack Peterson, a part-time conductor on Chattanooga's Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, told his passengers on July 4th: "To the very, very few Americans in here, happy Independence Day. To the rest of you, welcome to the greatest country on the face of the planet, and if you disagree, you can leave."
He was fired the same day.
A passenger named Nathan Scherer filmed the announcement and posted it to TikTok, where it promptly went viral. His brother Charles Scherer told NewsChannel 9 he felt compelled to report it: "I kept thinking the company needs to know about this, because he was the only one on there representing the company." The Incline Railway's director met with Peterson that afternoon and terminated him on the spot.
CARTA — the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority, which operates the railway — wasted no time issuing its official apology. Chief of Staff Scott Wilson released a statement that Monday reading: "I want to apologize directly to the passengers who experienced this and to everyone who has seen the video and felt its sting. It should never have happened. We have zero tolerance for language that demeans or excludes anyone who rides with us."
Wilson continued: "For 131 years, the Incline Railway has welcomed visitors from Chattanooga and from around the world. Every passenger who boards our railway deserves to feel respected and welcome, and we are committed to making sure that is always the case."
Peterson, for his part, didn't back down. "I'm very patriotic. It was the USA's Independence Day," he said. "It is not a racist or xenophobic thing to say."
Nathan Scherer offered his perspective to the press: "I just want this Incline to be an enjoyable experience, you know, for everyone to feel welcome."
So let's walk through this. A conductor on a tourist railway — an attraction that's been hauling visitors up Lookout Mountain since 1895 — wished Americans a happy Independence Day and called the United States the greatest country on the planet. On the Fourth of July. On a railway in Tennessee. And the official response from CARTA was to treat it like a hate crime, fire a part-time seasonal employee before sundown, and issue an apology dripping with the kind of language usually reserved for corporate scandals involving actual misconduct.
"Zero tolerance for language that demeans or excludes anyone." That's the phrase doing all the heavy lifting here. Saying America is the greatest country is now classified as demeaning. Telling people who disagree that they're free to leave — which is, quite literally, a statement of fact in a free country — is exclusionary language requiring a public apology.
The 131-year-old Incline Railway has survived two World Wars, the Great Depression, and decades of changing tourism trends. What it apparently cannot survive is a conductor who likes America too much on its birthday.
Peterson was a part-time, temporary summer employee. Not a executive. Not a spokesman. A guy running a tourist train up a mountain who got a little too enthusiastic about the holiday his country was celebrating. CARTA responded as though he'd read the passengers a manifesto.
The Scherer brothers were offended. The speed of the firing — same day, no investigation, no review, just gone — tells you everything about what "zero tolerance" actually means in practice. It means the first complaint wins. It means a TikTok video carries more institutional weight than 131 years of welcoming visitors.
When saying "welcome to the greatest country on the face of the planet" on Independence Day gets you fired faster than most people get their luggage at the airport, the problem isn't the conductor. The problem is that somewhere along the way, American institutions decided patriotism was a liability.