The Way God Intended.

@black4white Fortunately, he's not in the US.

@LeopoldBloom I am a yank, my friend. "Sree" is the name of a street kid who insisted on being my tourist guide for 100 rupees when I was in India. Mom is Italian and my father, an Anglo-Saxon, who was a Colonel in the US Army.

@sree251 That's too bad. I was hoping you wouldn't be able to vote here.

The Angles and the Saxons haven't been around for centuries. Your father is of English descent, which includes Celtic and possibly French as well as Germanic.

@LeopoldBloom You're damn right. My father was white, blond haired, and blue-eyed. He wasn't a Catholic though; but that was on my mother's side: proud Italians. It's unfortunate that the folks in Italy don't see us as that. When I was in Rome, some guy told me that Dean Martin was not Italian, that he was an American. I can understand that. One needs to know what's what.

@sree251 So he was northern European. He wasn't Anglo-Saxon unless he was 900 years old.

In high school, I was friends with an Italian girl whose family had emigrated from Milan. She was as blonde as a Norwegian. Northern Italy is very different from the South, which has more Arab influence from North Africa.

Dean Martin was, in fact, Italian - his real name was Dino Paul Crocetti. Another Italian was Iron Eyes Cody, who played Native Americans in the movies and is most famous for the "crying Indian" commercial where he weeps after seeing someone litter. His real name was Espera Oscar de Corti, and his parents were from Sicily. He and his wife adopted two Dakota-Maricopa children and they considered him to be a valid member of the Native American community.

@LeopoldBloom So, my father wasn't Anglo-Saxon as you claimed. Why hasn't the term "Anglo Saxons" been retired if those buggers no longer exist? The term WASPS is still being used. It stands for White Anglo Saxons.

Are you fond of native Americans? Why don't you refer to them as Apaches, Comanches, Sioux, etc.? We shouldn't cancel their cultural identities.

@sree251 It refers to Anglo-Saxon descent. You don't usually hear Italians refer to themselves as "Romans" unless they're from the city of Rome. "WASP" is "white Anglo-Saxon Protestant," but specifically refers to upper middle class and wealthy people from the northeast. Nobody where I grew up in California was called a "WASP" even if they met the definition.

If I know what group a Native American is from, I'll use that group's name, but if I'm referring to an issue that affects Native Americans as a whole, I'll use "Native American." Same for issues affecting Europeans, unless it specifically affects Swedes or Portuguese or Ukrainians. Or Americans vs. Nebraskans, Californians, etc. That's not "erasing" anything.

@LeopoldBloom Perhaps, there are no WASPs in California which is over-run with Mexicans. I think you are splitting hairs. Let's talk cultural reality and spare me google searches. Wikipedia stifles intelligent discourse about life of real people in real time. Nobody calls anybody a WASP out loud. WASPs is America's equivalent to British aristocrats. The US takes pride in its philosophy of equality and our politicians talk that kind of crap all the time. Do I believe in the bs? No.

I grew up in WASP culture. Apart from private country clubs, the only publicly funded places where WASP culture is entrenched are US Military facilities. My grandfather was a Colonel in the US Army. When I was ten, he often took me for Sunday lunch at the military base near our home. Everybody knew their place in the pecking order, the kind of order America needs coast to coast. I was serve prime ribs, perfectly sliced and plated by a kind African American in white gloves. I didn't ask him what group he was from. If I had, I would be able to tell you. They don't care anymore, do they? Neither do we.

@sree251 Wikipedia doesn't stifle anything. There's nothing stopping you from being a contributor other than laziness. It does have to be careful when reporting on current events or controversial issues. It's much better when you're looking for basic information, like how scotch is made or the behavior of ocean sunfish. For current events, you have to do a little more work and check a variety of sources.

Interesting about your experience with WASPs. But California isn't "over-run with Mexicans;" I grew up with Filipinos, Armenians, Native Americans, Central and South Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Serbians, Scottish, Irish, Black people, and many other groups. There are more Filipinos in Los Angeles than there are in any city in the world other than Manila. That's not unusual, by the way. I'm sure there were a few WASPs but it was impossible to distinguish them from all the other white people. My college roommate's father was Mexican, but his mother probably qualified as a WASP. I've never lived in the Northeast and my knowledge of the area is probably based on Woody Allen movies and John Cheever stories.

@LeopoldBloom Woody Allen is not a WASP by a long shot. Even though I like his movies, he is devious. He has to be to come up with those movie plots to mess up American minds.

Seems to me that you grew up in the under belly of America. I don't think the bottom 80% of the population should be allowed to vote. Whether you like it or not, America is run by the Wizard of Oz, not by people who takes pride in their power to vote. You need to wise up.

@sree251 I didn't say he's a WASP, but some of his movies have WASP characters. There are plenty of those in New York City, not so many in Southern California. And yeah, there are a lot of Mexicans in that area, just as there are a lot of Swedes in Minnesota. So what?

I grew up in a diverse area, Adolf. As far as the "underbelly of America," I went to the same high school the Beach Boys attended and lived a few blocks from the house the Wilson brothers grew up in.

I'm well aware that America is run by billionaires and corporations, who even own several Supreme Court justices. But if you think the two parties are indistinguishable for this reason, you're an ignoramus.

Who decides who the "bottom 80% of the population" is? I suspect you and I would come up with different people. I would go the opposite direction - all citizens have a stake in the country and should be allowed to vote. I would therefore make it easier to vote, with automatic registration and universal vote by mail. I would also allow prisoners to vote as there's no reason to strip someone's franchise just because they committed a crime.

@LeopoldBloom You would allow people to vote even though they committed a crime? The justice system is crooked. So, is the political system. I suppose it doesn't matter one way or another. You want to lower the bar right down to the ground so that no one is stigmatized, victimized, and ostracized.

@sree251 Yes. The U.S. has the highest percentage of its population in prison than any country in the world, including dictatorships. Prisoners live here too and should have a say in how things are run. It's disgusting how we disenfranchise some people permanently, even after they've paid their debt to society. We should at least allow people to vote once they've served their sentence.

We need to make voting easier so everyone who wants to vote is able to. Voter suppression is undemocratic and a sign of a dictatorship. Would you agree that anyone not allowed to vote under your system would be exempt from taxes? No sales tax, no property tax, and no income tax.

People will be "stigmatized, victimized, and ostracized" whether they vote or not. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.