44 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

calling you by your real name

To be a real American, you must have a real name. Or not.

18 minutes ago, Selene said:

It has become clearer to me that he is not the right man at this point to be President.  If he is nominated, I will work to elect him.

44 minutes ago, Roger Bissell said:

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ted Cruz's real name is Rafael Edward Cruz.

I think you do. And even if you do, it's a hell of a thing to think people calling you by your real name is mockery.

Not good for a politician. Talk about an existential crises and credibility gap...

 

Several years ago, there were two groups deliberately calling our current Thug-in-Chief by his full "real" name: Barack HUSSEIN Obama. (Actually, his full real name is Barack Hussein Obama Jr., contrary to those who think someone else, like Frank Davis, is his real father.)

One group was people trying to frighten people away from voting for or supporting him, because of the Muslim middle name. Rather feeble as a tactic for trying to keep him out of the White House.

The other group was people teaching little schoolchildren to chant his full name for a video prepared for showing on the internet and television, in order to rub it in to the first group that Obama was President whether they liked it or not. Very irritating and a disgraceful way to treat innocent, ignorant children, but whatever...

I do think that there might be some of the latter sort of thing, if Cruz is elected President. It would truly be karma, appropriately returned to the folks who are now calling him Rafael. However, since I strongly doubt Cruz will be elected, I also don't expect that I will get a chance to test this theory. 

I also think it's more than slightly disingenuous to assert that calling Ted Cruz by his "real" name is not mockery - or maybe something even more loathsome and pathetic. More specifically, an attempt to smear him by associating him with the inflammatory and/or wacky statements of his father whose name is, not coincidentally, Rafael.

REB 

I have teeth that want to chew into this whole episode. But I am committed to the aural tradition, and will take these moments with me into the POD.  Perhaps REB is interested in heading down this alley a ways.  It is so depressing a subject, but I think worth the expenditure in sanitizing solution.

Where disagreement is starkest -- there is the coal-face of Reason. Together an epistemologically-sound team of technicians can dig out the whys and the wherefores, and solve the equation that disagreement represents.

Again, I say too much in the air topside. The excursion into names requires a high-oxygen environment.  There is not enough room to breathe in the thread that will not end ...