On Our Dumbass Exceptionalism
Our use Fahrenheit measures something beyond temperature
In anticipation of our first trip across the proverbial pond to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, I was trying to recall how to convert degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit, so we would know how to pack.
You know, that quick mental exercise about adding or subtracting the scale difference in the metric and the imperial systems at the freezing point and then multiplying or dividing by 1.8? When I finally looked it up, I read that the United States is the only major country, and one of only a handful of countries and territories in the world, to not utilize the metric system.
That was crazy as far back as the 1960s, when the rest of the world switched to the International System of Units, otherwise known as the metric system.
I mean, water freezes at a logical zero degrees on the Celsius scale but at a seemingly arbitrary 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Water boils at a nice round 100 degrees Celsius but won’t bubble until it reaches a hard-to-remember 212 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s even hard to remember how to spell Fahrenheit. (Yeah, yeah, there’s also a Kelvin temperature scale, but why get into something that takes me uncomfortably back to my college chemistry classes?)
As I struggled a bit to memorize a few key mental conversions (e.g., 40 degrees Celsius is a very hot day, 30 degrees is quite warm), it occurred to me that our dogged use of the imperial scale measures something beyond temperature. It is an indicator of the right’s fear of books, science, history, expertise, big cities, independent women — well, most everything real and useful in this world.
Our standard standoffishness of what politicians call “American Exceptionalism” has now been further degraded, with Trump’s “America First” policies and executive orders being based on his largely ahistorical ideas of a mostly nineteenth-century world where America was a magical land protected by oceans (and a “Gulf of America”) and tariffs (“My favorite word”), where “nasty” women and people of color knew their place, and where very nice robber barons could work their laborers into early graves.
And, as predicted, his reckless destruction of USAID and his incredible unpleasantness (as he might put it, Like the world has never seen!) to our historic allies and trading partners, his attacks at home on the Department of Education and our great universities, and his continued feeding of MAGA’s learned distrust of expertise of any kind (especially that of scientists and historians) will destroy the American economy for decades.
With Christian white nationalists, MAGA conspiracists, and Trumpian grifters running the government, should we amend the already suspect phrase to American Dumbass Exceptionalism?
Scientists are logical, and many of them are therefore logically leaving the country because of Trump’s attacks on education and scientific research funding. As others have pointed out, the United States prospered after World War II largely because so many scientists in Europe had emigrated here to escape authoritarian leaders. Trump’s brilliant plan is to create a brain drain from the United States back to Europe, where scientists are, logically, being welcomed with open arms.
It fits, though, with our learned distrust of all things Europe, something that Americans suffered from the very beginnings, even though Europe fed our culture and France helped us secure our independence and sent us that incredible statue that they ought to request be returned in light of Trump’s belligerent tariffs and his general unpleasantness. Though Republican antipathy to Europe isn’t anything new (remember the embarrassment of “Freedom Fries”?), in Trump, Europeans have found the apotheosis of the Ugly American.
The Unfettered Capitalist elite fear Americans using the metric system will begin to fancy themselves European and expect more from government.
Politicians will tell you that we don’t teach the metric system here because the people don’t want it. And I get that. Pounds and ounces sound human; grams and centimeters sound clinical. At 15, I was our track team’s best miler, not 1600K-er.
But I think the Unfettered Capitalist elite fear Americans using the metric system on the regular will begin to fancy themselves European and expect more from government. Sure, go run your 10K race on the odd weekend, and, sure, take however many milliliters of your weight-loss drug that’s prescribed. But we’re not going to let this socialistic Europanization of the American mind go too far.
Because Trump and the billionaire bros are the true elites, they always revert to standard divide-and-conquer strategies.
Republicans cringe when everyday Americans hear about how many EU countries treat their citizens, including children and the aged, with respect and dignity.
Sometimes a terrific essay, like this one from author Russell Shorto, or, say, an informative video slips through from an American who has lived in Denmark or Sweden or The Netherlands and has figured out that when you add up all the different taxes we pay in this country — federal, state, property — we get far, far less for them, in terms of affordable education, health care, child and elder care, and shared infrastructure than what Europeans receive.
Sometimes, an insightful book written by a former European living in the United States, like journalist Anu Partanen’s “Nordic Theory of Everything,” breaks through to the public here and reminds us of what we should expect from the American Dream.
Corporations operating in the United States bear much of the burden of our lack of a social safety net — salaries here tend to be higher, the business has to kick in for health insurance, and the company has to pay into each employee’s Social Security.
I worked for a corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, and I got the distinct impression that the higher-ups were irritated that they had to pay such high salaries to their U.S. employees to essentially cover how little we received back from our government in terms of services for our taxes.
Some years back, The New York Times did a terrific video of people around the world reacting to the unfair and incredibly confusing U.S. healthcare system. (I often got similar reactions from work colleagues based in The Netherlands or the United Kingdom.)
When people here slip through the ever-widening cracks in the system and need assistance, they are often reduced to begging via GoFundMe appeals. Ronald Reagan became president after telling hard-working Americans stories about a fantasy Black welfare queen, while in the real world Republican-supporting companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have for decades paid many employees so little that people working full time still must rely on food stamps and Medicaid. So, taxpayers subsidize those massively profitable corporations.
Likewise, citizens living in low-tax red states have their government services subsidized by citizens living in higher tax blue states. Republicans do all they can to lie about this fact because all they can do about it is muddy the waters. The larger blue states are funding many red states, and yet the citizens of those red states still often see poor results in measures of quality of life, such as education, environmental quality, personal freedom, crime, and economic opportunity.
So, like nearly everything they say, the Republican line about blue states living off the federal dole is a lie. States in the Deep South are heavily supported by the most economically potent blue states. If you happen to live in an economic powerhouse red state, like Texas or Florida, it doesn’t mean you will see better government services or a higher quality of life.
Your state-level Republican leaders will give you plenty of that “freedom” they have taught you to crave — but likely also freedom from access to good education and good healthcare, from affordable childcare, from infrastructure improvements (like providing reliable power during heat waves or setting up weather alert alarms in a historic floodplain), from books they find troubling. What else? Oh, yes — freedom from a woman’s control over her own body.
Getting back to temperature scales, the man-child who once extended a hurricane forecast with a Sharpie to match his own incorrect prediction, is now destroying the National Weather Service because (I guess) if people don’t hear about disastrous weather caused by climate change, then it doesn’t exist?
Why is the United States the only major country not using the metric system? Why am I sitting here, in 2025, figuring the conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius? Why do we still cook in ounces and buy gas in gallons?
It’s partly because insanely wealthy Republicans are determined that you never feel a kinship with, and begin to think like, a European — which is to say, like a humanist, someone who cares about others.
