Actually, -
@Eric - having just read this post, - and your own thoughts - elsewhere (Over There) I had hoped that we might be able to discuss pshufd's post (have forgotten his TA name, otherwise I'd have tagged him, here - please do the needful if possible) here, as I do not believe that it is possible to have a civilised discussion on such a topic there, on MR.
Not without appearing to be an utter twat.
Sometimes, circumstances dictate that one cannot use one's real name in on online environment. Or, rather, one can, but then, one cannot truly post what one thinks.
On Twitter, I use my real name, but my tweets are boring, and prudent, and cautious and careful.
When I opened my account there, (on the recommendations of a Dutch colleague, a senior police officer -
@lizkat knows of my tale concerning Pachelbel's Canon, I'll relate it, as it is well worth telling, but this is the guy in question, in whose company I was when Pachelbel's Canon was playing, - and, on Mac related matters, I sold him - at his request - my first 11" MBA, he wished to to buy a really nice computer for his estranged wife) in Kabul, in 2013, when I served as a political analyst/counsellor with the EU in a diplomatic capacity, a specialist on elections with a brief to analyse closely the 2014 elections in Afghanistan and report on everything to do with the elections to Brussels - I also ensured that I had locked my account to ensure that I couldn't post when dangerously uninhibited, having partaken too generously of the products of the grape or the grain. It would have been unprofessional. And stupid.
And on MR, I was equally careful.
Until the day I posted a carefully crafted (and informed) and argued post, with comments, questions, thoughts, observations - because I knew Afghanistan, and had a fairly good idea by then of how things worked, I had a lot of seriously good Afghan contacts -
@JamesMike will understand this sort of stuff - on Bowe Bergdahl, and, to my stupefied amazement, - it was almost entirely ignored, as the perfervid posters on MR preferred to virtaul fling foul faeces (suitably disguised) at one another.
In fact, I had initially opened my account on MR to ask questions about a MBP I had treated myself to as a belated birthday present in 2008.
Within a little over a month, I was asked to travel to Georgia, in a diplomatic capacity with the EU mission set up as a consequence of the Medvedev-Sarkozy Agreement after their conflict with Russia. I was there for over two years.
Nobody said anything to me, but, while in the Caucasus, I took a sort of self-imposed vow of (political) silence - thinking it unprofessional (not that anyone on MR knew or cared) to post anything about politics.
And I held to that position - perhaps out of a misguided sense of professional etiquette - for the best part of a decade, during most of my deployment in Afghanistan, my subsequnet election observation missions, (including a contentious one, in Russia, in 2016), and my deployment (as a diplomat with the EU) in Somalia.
Anyway, this is merely an aside - a comment - to explain that sometimes, there are very good rasons why soeone cannot post under their real name; or, rather, they can, but then, they are precluded from saying anything of real interest or merit, becaue to do so would be both unprofessional, and possibly, professionaly catastrophic.