Did I hear that right?

I've been rather busy lately and when I'm busy, I don't follow the news as carefully as I otherwise might.  So I've been catching back up.

And it seems like what I'm catching back up with is a lot of odd use of terms and name calling.

These stories aren't, really, completely connected, other than that they give a glimpse into the zeitgeists of the era, as well into the odd American concept of race.  Indeed, they've crossed party lines and get about 30 seconds worth of real attention before the next one pops up.  It's rather illuminating.

Things seem to have started off when Nancy Pelosi took a shot at "the Squad" which is apparently what newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are being called by the inside the beltway hip and cool.  Pelosi has done this before, and sort of inarticulately slams her fellow Democrats for being a bunch of wet behind the ears unrealistic youngsters.  The Squad hasn't taken that kindly and has felt free to punch back, and so has Pelosi.

Pelosi must have really gotten to Ocasio-Cortez this go around as has she laid down the race card and accused Pelosi of picking on "women of color". 

Now that's interesting as only Pressley and Ilhan Omar are "women of color" under the modern definition.  I.e., they're both black.

Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, is from a near identical demographic, in terms of American historical treatment, to Pelosi.  I.e., in long terms, Pelosi could now accuse her of attacking women of color.  Pelosi was born to two Italian American parents in 1940, at which time her birth would have put her in the tail end of the era in which Italians were regarded as their own race.  AoC was born of parents of Puerto Rican heritage (one was from Puerto Rico).  They're both "Latins" by the old racial identification that was still around mid century.  Now in the 21st Century that no longer applies to those of Italian heritage, but only because of assimilation.  In another couple of decades the same will be true for Hispanics.

Tlaib is of Palestinian extraction.  Oddly, Arabs, in the United States, weren't regarded as their own separate race until after World War Two.  There was a lot of Arab immigration into the U.S. prior to World War Two in the form of Christian Lebanese immigration.  Perhaps because of their religion, they weren't regarded as any more of a race than the French were. 

Indeed, there was a really odd fascination with Arabs, who were portrayed as being sort of sexy, in the early movie industry.  There were, at that time, a lot of movies which featured American women traveling to Arabia to be wooed by Arab sheiks, and the image of Arab women was that of veiled dancers forever.

That all shows, really, that all of these racial categories are really false.  Ethnicity is something real, but "race" is purely cosmetic.  And the Squad is of diverse ethnicity.  AoC's ethnicity is really closer, fwiw, to Pelosi's than Omar's is.

So maybe this was just politics.

Following all of that President Trump picked up the unfortunate baton and told these women to "go home".  They already are home, as they were all born in the U.S.  He's being accused of being racist in his comments.  Irrespective of whether he's racist or not, what that statement really is, is nativist, which is different.  The two are often confused, in part because they do often cross over.  People who want immigrants to rapidly assimilate without contributing a counter assimilation by the larger culture, or to leave, are expressing a nativist sentiment.  People who want people of some ethnicity born in the country to "go home" may in fact be expressing a racist sentiment.  In Trump's case, it's hard to know if he thought these Congresswomen were born elsewhere, but whatever he was thinking, he shouldn't have said what he said.

Which lead to Nancy Pelosi ironically quoting him from an earlier speech in which he referred to some African nations is a defecatory manner, in the House and being expelled for its speech rules.  Pelosi surely knew that was the rule so it was for effect.

In the meantime, Lindsey Graham apparently called the Squad a "bunch of Communists".  Whatever else they may be, they aren't Communists.  AoC claims to be a Socialist (although I doubt she really fully knows what that means), but Tlaib and Omar are observant Muslims, which means they definitely aren't Communists.  Pressley is a Christian of some denomination, and AoC was raised a Catholic by two Catholic parents, but I don't know if she is currently practicing.  None of them are Communists.

Finally, because a surreal age comment can't go by with out being noticed, on This Week Bernie Saunders, when asked about The Squad and his age, claimed that he was ahead in the polls among "young people", which he then defined as people "under 45/50 years of age".

I suppose if you are Bernie's age, somebody under 50 might be "young". But in reality, except in the juvenile obsessed United States, you aren't.