The Metric system is a commie plot

In conversation, the title statement never fails to get a laugh. I use it as a political ice breaker all the time. And once they stop laughing I remind them how it went in Canada.

Anyone who needed to use the metric system, scientists and so on, already did. There was no prohibition on it whatsoever. You could use the Kelvin temperature scale if you wanted to, and its far better in terms of scientific measure of temperature for that matter. But what Pierre Trudeau did, was permanently change the culture with the stroke of a pen, disconnecting us from our past and way of seeing the measure of things, very human ways of measuring things, and make it an imprisonable offence to do so in the way in which we always had done it.

Imprisonable.

You could face 6 months in prison for measuring meat in pounds at a grocery store, or gasoline in gallons at a gas station, or milk in quarter gallons. (Quarts)

Over 90% of our trade was with the United States, who used the Imperial system for all things. Forcing us to change systems made it clumsy at the very least for dealing with our #1, #2, and #3 customer for all things, the USA. Not to mention milling boards and so on in a way that wouldn’t fit their blueprints was an especially stupid thing to do if the purpose of Metric had any practical value, which it did not. As I already said, people who needed to use metric, had been already using it for their purposes.

Joe Clark who managed to get into power briefly when Trudeau Sr. had managed to become as unpopular as his son is now for similar reasons, created the freedom to measure act, and took away any penalty for how we wished to quantify things. But most of the damage was done.

The real point of it was to use state power to eliminate a huge chunk of our past and our culture. Something they now are extending to the language and many other aspects of our culture and history, and in as destructive a way possible.

In the past couple of days I have been listening to the audiobook of 1984 and just this morning happened across this passage:

 The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having
some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young
man with enormous forearms. A knot of others, standing round with glasses
in their hands, were watching the scene.

'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his
shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the
'ole bleeding boozer?'

'And what in hell's name IS a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with
the tips of his fingers on the counter.

''Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why,
a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon.
'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'

'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half
litre--that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front
of you.'

'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint
easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'

'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the
barman, with a glance at the other customers.

There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry
seemed to disappear. The old man's white-stubbled face had flushed pink. He
turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught
him gently by the arm.

'May I offer you a drink?' he said.

'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his shoulders again. He
appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls. 'Pint!' he added
aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of wallop.'

The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into thick glasses
which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter. Beer was the only drink
you could get in prole pubs. The proles were supposed not to drink gin,
though in practice they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of
darts was in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun
talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten for a
moment. There was a deal table under the window where he and the old man
could talk without fear of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous, but
at any rate there was no telescreen in the room, a point he had made sure
of as soon as he came in.

''E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down
behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole
litre's too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.'

Curiously, Orwell appears to make one of the same points that I usually do arguing this point. A pint, he explains in the voice of the old man, is the right amount of beer. A litre is too much, and a half litre doesn’t satisfy.

A mile is about as far as you want to walk to a grocery store. A foot is around the length of a foot. A yard is around the length of your arm. Nearly every adult has a finger bone that is nearly exactly an inch. A pound is intuitive. And I have yet to hear any songsmith craft, “500 kilometres” and create any pathos with it,

These are human measures. They are in harmony with our experience.

Of course young people raised with the metric system in Canada and the UK won’t get the point of this post at all. They are used to it. It is how it is. The fact that it is state mandated culture, and that it caused the erasure of a thousand years of Western development means nothing to them.

It is somewhat like my objection to people who dismiss my concerns about Islam taking over in the West. Some people respond that it hardly matters. They will, in order to continue to enjoy the perks of society, just pretend to be Muslim. But inside they know what they think and feel.

But the children, the children will be the real thing. They will identify as Muslim because the cost of not doing so will be very high. And if some children are willing to have their genitals and breasts cut off for a sense of belonging, it won’t be hard to get over 99% of them to say the shahada. And their children will turn in their faking-it grandparents as hypocrites. Munafiq. The penalty for that is likely death as it easily could be viewed as a kind of apostasy. And just like communism, where any kid can turn in any adult for harbouring counter-revolutionary thoughts.

17 years ago or so, friends of mine with children in public school showed me an assignment the kids had. They were to report to the teacher any inefficient washing machines or light bulbs their parents had and report on it to the teacher. They were to rat out their parents for carbon heresies. And that was over 15 years ago. Now, the parents can lose the children altogether if they defy state narratives to the children at home. Saying for instance that a man is a man and a woman is a woman is a criminal offence if a teacher or councillor is trying to convince your child of the metaphysical position that he or she was born in the wrong body. You could lose your children and go to jail under Trudeau’s ironically named, Anti-Conversion therapy bill, C-4.