It’s July 4th, so I’ve been thinking a little bit more than usual about the general state of this country and now I’m just confused by it all. Not only about current events, no, those are too confusing to even address with all the talk about gun violence and the towering number of mass murders looming over our heads, the current Ukraine War, and of course the extremely present overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court’s hand. My question today is why America?
Why do we need a different system of measurement from the rest of the world? Our system isn’t even better. The metric system, on one hand, is so much easier, every unit of measurement only has one name; either grams, meters, or liters and then words to come before. Mili, centi, kilo, the same for every type of measurement, in a simple system of tens. America could have easily accepted this perfectly fine, good system, but no, customary system to the rescue, or might I say, to our downfall. America’s system of measurement is nothing but messy, with too many names to remember in weird orders with weird numbers. What is 5280? Apparently what America decided would be a good number of feet in a mile and don’t even get me started on the units of measurement for volume. You can’t even count the number of hours in elementary school spent just memorizing how many quarts are in a gallon, how many pints are in a quart, how many cups are in a pint, how many ounces are in a pint, numbers that are not, in any way uniform. This time we spent could be used on so many more productive things, which honestly, is one of the reasons why the American people grow up to elect stupid people who elect even stupider people to make even stupider decisions while sitting high and mighty over the US. But that’s beside the point. Truly, I just think that America is trying to torture their school children.
We also grow up with the idea that America is truly and purely good, fighting against the evils of colonialism and imperialism. Now, in our current times, America is a good country to live in, far better than the areas where genocide is still happening, more people are safe and happy of course. However, most Americans believe that America becoming its own country was a fight against an evil dictator of a king, when in actuality, the beginning story of America is just another group of Europeans thinking that they are genetically superior to another group of people just for being more “advanced”. We learn in school that Christopher Columbus was the hero who discovered America, but how can you discover a country that already has people living in it? He was an awful, terrible person who kill and enslaved so many of the indigenous people already living here. And I know you’re ready to say but that was back then, he wasn’t that bad for the 15th century’s standards, but actually, he was brought back to Europe and imprisoned for years when the people there heard what he was doing.
Then, as the British colonized America, they drove out and enslaved the indigenous people from their own territory where them and their ancestors had lived for years. This awful practice lasted long after the Revolutionary war with the entire idea of “Manifest Destiny” and the taking over of the west side of America. More driving people out of their own homes for not being white, so fun! The entire United States is just built off the idea of white supremacy and the American people don’t even know it, they just think that they’re better for not colonizing an entire country like they believe the Europeans did for so long even though they still did (Remember the Philippines? And Hawaii? And so many more). They did all the Europeans did and possibly even more.
We Americans think that we’re the high and mighty land of the free, but the loss of freedom is something we’ve inflicted on people time and time again (usually because of race, remember those Japanese internment camps?). So, I suggest that instead of teaching the ridiculous, time-consuming, incredibly stupid customary system, the American People should start teaching the truth about the bigotry America is built on to help prevent it in the future.
Your Citizen Tired from Memorizing Absurd Numbers,
Why do we need a different system of measurement from the rest of the world? Our system isn’t even better. The metric system, on one hand, is so much easier, every unit of measurement only has one name; either grams, meters, or liters and then words to come before. Mili, centi, kilo, the same for every type of measurement, in a simple system of tens. America could have easily accepted this perfectly fine, good system, but no, customary system to the rescue, or might I say, to our downfall. America’s system of measurement is nothing but messy, with too many names to remember in weird orders with weird numbers. What is 5280? Apparently what America decided would be a good number of feet in a mile and don’t even get me started on the units of measurement for volume. You can’t even count the number of hours in elementary school spent just memorizing how many quarts are in a gallon, how many pints are in a quart, how many cups are in a pint, how many ounces are in a pint, numbers that are not, in any way uniform. This time we spent could be used on so many more productive things, which honestly, is one of the reasons why the American people grow up to elect stupid people who elect even stupider people to make even stupider decisions while sitting high and mighty over the US. But that’s beside the point. Truly, I just think that America is trying to torture their school children.
We also grow up with the idea that America is truly and purely good, fighting against the evils of colonialism and imperialism. Now, in our current times, America is a good country to live in, far better than the areas where genocide is still happening, more people are safe and happy of course. However, most Americans believe that America becoming its own country was a fight against an evil dictator of a king, when in actuality, the beginning story of America is just another group of Europeans thinking that they are genetically superior to another group of people just for being more “advanced”. We learn in school that Christopher Columbus was the hero who discovered America, but how can you discover a country that already has people living in it? He was an awful, terrible person who kill and enslaved so many of the indigenous people already living here. And I know you’re ready to say but that was back then, he wasn’t that bad for the 15th century’s standards, but actually, he was brought back to Europe and imprisoned for years when the people there heard what he was doing.
Then, as the British colonized America, they drove out and enslaved the indigenous people from their own territory where them and their ancestors had lived for years. This awful practice lasted long after the Revolutionary war with the entire idea of “Manifest Destiny” and the taking over of the west side of America. More driving people out of their own homes for not being white, so fun! The entire United States is just built off the idea of white supremacy and the American people don’t even know it, they just think that they’re better for not colonizing an entire country like they believe the Europeans did for so long even though they still did (Remember the Philippines? And Hawaii? And so many more). They did all the Europeans did and possibly even more.
We Americans think that we’re the high and mighty land of the free, but the loss of freedom is something we’ve inflicted on people time and time again (usually because of race, remember those Japanese internment camps?). So, I suggest that instead of teaching the ridiculous, time-consuming, incredibly stupid customary system, the American People should start teaching the truth about the bigotry America is built on to help prevent it in the future.
Your Citizen Tired from Memorizing Absurd Numbers,
