This post had its genesis when Mary and I were cruising through Latin America earlier this year. However, probably due in large part to my steadily advancing age, I forgot about it, and it got lost somewhere deep inside the inner, mysterious canyons of my Toshiba laptop.
It came to my mind again recently when I read a post from my blogging friend Mellowdee. She’s from British Columbia. In the post I’m referring to, Mel had a hard time converting Celcius degrees into Fahrenheit degrees, and I don’t blame her one bit. When she used Celcius degrees, everybody in the world knew what she was talking about, unless, of course, you came from the United States. ( I believe that we are the only country on the planet that uses Fahrenheit, and, rather than learn the Celcius scale, we expect everybody else in the friggin’ world to learn the Fahrenheit scale!)
With that in mind, here’s the post:

 
It seems to me that the people who populate the government offices in Washington, D.C. are not solely to blame for the isolation of the U.S. from the rest of the world. We as a people have a lot to do with that also, and I’m not just talking about the fact that we keep electing idiots to office whose sole goal in life is to get elected to office and horde wealth. I’m speaking about our reluctance as a nation to embrace the metric system.
If you do not know Celsius degrees, liters, kilograms, and kilometers, you will have a hard time getting by in every nation of the world except for the U.S. In the rest of the world, weight is measured in kilograms, not pounds. Temperature is Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Distance is kilometers, not miles. Liquids are measured in liters, not quarts or gallons.
The metric system is not so difficult to figure out. In fact, it is fairly simple. Everything is based on 10’s. You just keep moving the decimal place around. Unlike our complicated system that has no rhyme or reason. (12 inches to a foot. 3 feet to a yard. 4 quarts to a gallon, etc.), the metric system makes perfect sense. (For example, on the Celsius scale, 0 degrees is the freezing point of water, and 100 degrees is the boiling point of water. Isn’t 0 and 100 easier to remember than 32 and 212?) The problem with the system is that it is foreign to us. So we don’t want to bother with it. God forbid we should be slightly inconvienced in the short run to make life easier for everybody on the planet, including ourselves, in the no-so-long run.
The same thing holds true with language. We expect every other nation in the world to speak English. We expect immigrants to who come to our country to speak the language. Yet, when we travel abroad, do we even make an attempt to learn the languages? Do we even carry the translator dictionaries any more? Unfortunately for many Americans, we do not have a second language, and, if you listen to how English is used in this country, it becomes readily apparent that many of us do not have a first language! (Do you say, "snuck"? Are you aware that, according to Webster's, "snuck" is not a word? The past tense of "sneak" is "sneaked." Really. Type "snuck" into a document on your computer and watch the spell-check go nuts.)
In foreign countries, children graduate high school having learned at least one foreign language, and that language is usually English. In our country, among the first classes to be cut from the curriculums when budgets get tight are foreign languages! Think about it. How many languages, other than English, are you fluent in?
I was witness to Americans in Nicaragua who became indignant when the locals either could not or would not convert kilograms and liters into pounds and gallons for them. (The tourists wanted the conversions so that they could see if they were getting a bargain on rice and beer.) To my way of thinking, these Americans had no right to get upset. They were in a foreign country. It was up to them to adjust to the natives’ ways and customs, not the other way around. I found it arrogant that these Americans got so upset and condescending about the issue. What would happen if the situation were reversed, and these Americans were asked to convert liters to gallons and kilograms to pounds for foreign tourists visiting our country?
We Americans have got to accept the fact that we are no more important nor more entitled than anybody else who lives on the planet.
I think the reason why we are disliked in so many countries is because of this condescension and arrogance. What right do we have to demand that the rest of the world cater to us and change their ways of measuring and even LIVING in order to make things easier for us? As I traveled around Latin America on this voyage, I came to the conclusion that it is not just the learning disabled monkey who is presently in residence in the Oval Office that is giving our country a bad name: it is we American citizens with our superior attitudes. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo once proclaimed from the newspaper comic strip, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
I guess it’s time to stop putting the blame on our stupid elected officials and own up to the fact that part of the problem with America’s image to the rest of the world lies with us. It is up to us to become better world citizens. For most of us, myself included, that is going to require a major attitude change.