@dyslexia,
Dyslexia wrote:personally I think it's part of the "american psyche" anachronistic for sure but it's "I am who I say I am and I don't want no government telling me otherwise".
That is the opposite of my own experience. It's the
German governments respecting who I am, and the
American governments telling me I'm someone else. America doesn't need a national ID to screw up my name.
OK, maybe I should explain that. In real life, I go by the name of "Thomas", but my
full first name is "Gunter Thomas". German authorities never had a problem with that. In my official documents, including my much-demonized national ID, the name "Thomas" is underlined to indicate that that's the name I'm going by. So
if German officials ever called me by my first name -- which they never did, because they would have considered it disrespectful -- it would certainly have been my correct name, "Thomas".
Not so in America. American officials diligently follow a two-step process to mangle my name. First, they'll have nothing of that talk about the underlining business. To them, my first name is whatever the first item in my list of given names is: "Gunter". Second, even though we've never met, they simply assume they can call me by my first name. So it never occurs to them to even
ask "may I call you 'Gunter'?", to which I would reply, "no -- you can call me 'Thomas' or 'Mr B.', but not 'Gunter'. I've never gone by the name of 'Gunter'". They simply call me what
they mistakenly think my name is, and if I don't like it, that's my problem.
Consequently, America and I are at an impasse about my name. I'm telling everyone I'm "Thomas", and American authorities are telling me I'm "Gunter", or at best "Gunter T." There's an alien with a false identity for you.
