I've already blogged this topic many, many times, including multiple times recently. I'm only linking for one reason: The casual — and offensive — disrespect for whirling dervishes!
"This kind of whirling is a form of physical meditation.... It is a form of worship...."
Dowd is treating the religion of The Other as ridiculous and silly. How is that still happening in the New York Times? I presume the continuing disrespect for fundamentalist Christians is intentional, but the Whirling Dervishes are Muslims!
It is a customary meditation practice performed within the sema, or worship ceremony, through which dervishes (also called semazens, from Persian سماعزن) aim to reach the source of all perfection, or karma. This is sought through abandoning one's nafs, ego or personal desires, by listening to the music, focusing on God, and spinning one's body in repetitive circles, which has been seen as a symbolic imitation of planets in the Solar System orbiting the sun....
As explained by Sufis:
In the symbolism of the Sema ritual, the semazen's camel's hair hat (sikke) represents the tombstone of the ego; his wide, white skirt (tennure) represents the ego's shroud. By removing his black cloak (hırka), he is spiritually reborn to the truth. At the beginning of the Sema, by holding his arms crosswise, the semazen appears to represent the number one, thus testifying to god's unity.
While whirling, his arms are open: his right arm is directed to the sky, ready to receive god's beneficence; his left hand, upon which his eyes are fastened, is turned toward the earth. The semazen conveys god's spiritual gift to those who are witnessing the Sema. Revolving from right to left around the heart, the semazen embraces all humanity with love. The human being has been created with love in order to love.
Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi says, "All loves are a bridge to Divine love. Yet, those who have not had a taste of it do not know!"
While whirling, his arms are open: his right arm is directed to the sky, ready to receive god's beneficence... that is nothing like anything the Supreme Court is doing.
The human being has been created with love in order to love.
Posts
42 comments:
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
The "Americans" she refers to are left wing Democrats. Sorry to be redundant there.
"the idea that Americans are beginning to regard the court as a dangerous cabal of partisan hacks."
Beginning? When, since the 1930s, have Dem appointees not been utterly predictable partisan hacks?
What we have here is the progressive realization that their reliance on the courts to implement their agenda can backfire.
The dangerous cabal is one of the few non-progressive centers of power left. Hence, it must be reviled and destroyed.
Last week the Republicans helped Schumer avoid the debt crisis.
For this he accused them of playing a "dangerous and risky partisan game".
It's not the Court that has become more partisan.
Whirling Dervishes: +1. They seek a higher communion with God.
Maureen Dowd and the NYT: -3.5T. They seek the enslavement of Americans to their communist masters.
What's With media people (and politicians, which ARE media people) and not ever retiring?
Dowdy is 69 years old, WHY is she still 'working'?
Sure, she's getting paid; but
..i) not that much
.ii) not like she needs it
I guess it's not that tiring of a 'job', but still;
Is her Ego SO BIG, that she Has To keep at it?
Who was the last media person/politician to just pack it in, and retire?
Well, Kagan, Breyer, and especially Sotomayor are hacks. Not the rest.
The whirling also reminds me of the "cult" featured in the Netflix doc mini-seried "Wild Wild Country" which I've just started rewatching.
The New York Times mostly sees fit to print news and opinion that presents 'reality' as if what they are aiming to create is what already is. It probably exists in the mind of the little cabal's cocoon where they live.
The key to determine if a justice is a partisan hack is if she or he votes in knee-jerk lockstep with a specific group, usually without offering any opinions explaining their votes, and the opinions of those of the group who do offer one are poorly reasoned.
A favorite smidgeon of Firesign Theater was shouted at the rally at More Science High...
"What is reality?" This is building up... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M
Of course the NYT is an organ of possibly the oldest, and certainly the bloodiest, religion of all: the Cult of the State.
If only Merrick Garland had been allowed to take his rightful place on the Supreme Court. Then we finally would have had a justice who is NOT a complete partisan hack.
The Garland (non)confirmation experience should be a huge lesson to senators to not simply rubber stamp nominees (at any level), but to really scrutinize them (like the Dems do and have done).
Does America appreciate the fact that illegals will be evaporating our resources? "Turn off your mind relax and float downstream"... Tomorrow Never Knows.
Dowd botches the idea of spinning in politics: it’s not the person who spins, but the arguments or facts that they put spin on. Like a curveball or slice backhand.
Dowd seems like she waits with baited breath, and thinks “shoot your wad” is a sexual term.
Shorter Down: Only the leftwing religion is the One True Religion.
Kagan, Breyer, and especially Sotomayor are hacks
Yes, the "especially" for the "wise Latinx" is especially apt. The other two at least try, even though they are totally wedded to foolosophy.
Predictable.
Minus the great hats, I'm sure I've seen this before at a Dead concert.
I prefer The Wailing Dervishes myself.
https://youtu.be/M0mcII-mE4g
(herbie Mann & friends)
John Henry
Their cross-town rivals are the Derving Whirlishes...
Sure they're a bunch of partisan hacks, but they're *our* partisan hacks.
-or-
It's different when I do it.
Mo Dowd is as predictable as Linda Greenhouse and all the other NYC elites. When you have a majority moderate court, they must be shamed unless they "evolve."
I don't worry much about Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch bending to their will, but Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett worry me. Roberts is a lost cause, but he is better than Souter.
I respect Kagan and Breyer as intelligent jurists, albeit predictably lefty. Sotomayor is a joke and an insult to truly wise Latinas..
Dowd is treating the religion of The Other as ridiculous and silly. How is that still happening in the New York Times?"
Reminder: All religious people are The Other to The NY Times. Their editorial policy is, if described accurately, honor religion only in so far as it helps to advance their narrative against traditional Americans and their culture. No respect for anything that doesn't advance secular humanism, globalism, cultural elites, and Marxism/Socialism/Progressivism.
It's got a good beat--you can whirl to it. But I get dizzy watching others do that, so I had to turn it off.
But nobody has mentioned the definition of 'dervish,' which is a mendicant. IOW, street goofs who figured out a way to pick up a few akces without working. I find the old-style Turkish military bands and marches pretty cool, though.
As for the Supremes, it's cabals within cabals, like the rest of DeeCeelandia, and while there may be decent individuals there, the hackery stink is pervasive and overwhelming.
And MoDo and her class are inventing--constructing!--Social Justice Realism.
A half century ago, the Supremes could overturn the moral reasoning and laws of an entire country to establish from thin air - an emanation of a penumbra - the right to kill unborn babies. The court members didn't rush about whirling to dissuade America that they weren't partisan hacks then. They just took their power and ran with it.
Now the press is concerned that this runaway power might be restrained - not to implement a Christian form of sharia law here, not at all - merely to roll back some of the Court's overstepping of good limits on their jurisprudence in the last half century - and merely restraining that impulse to settle by Court dictat what should be settled by social dynamics and legislation is to be a partisan hack.
OK, then. I, for one, look forward to the 5/4 decisions on everything from government-supplied free citizen firearms (2nd Amendment support) to elimination of every government program from the Great Society onward that has no Constitutional basis. Go for it, you partisan hacks. Show me what you got!
Dowd was forced to go with "whirling dervishes" after her editor cancelled her reference to the tigers spinning themselves into butter in the Little Black Sambo story.
I was surprised to find out that Sambo was actually Indian, rather than African, but still, he's persona non grata nowadays.
The Constitution only means what a majority of supreme court justices say it means, actual text notwithstanding. On any given issue, you can predict with a high degree of confidence how each justice will vote based on politics. Given that, how are we to not think of the justices as just a bunch of partisan hacks? By and large, they are hacks and have been for a long time.
I worship best in quietness, but I have been to churches where people shout, dance, and spin in the Spirit. These practices transcend any one religion. ‘All loves are a bridge to divine love.’ What a true statement.
Perhaps she should have used "Tasmanian Devils" instead? Like in the Looney Toons.
MoDo and teh Hat People… live at Scunions tonight 7pm, no bottles allowed.
Two or three comments from justices about hackery mean the justices "wildly spinning?"
The spinning comes from the media and from politicians, and it's always going on. Barrett and Breyer gave a fig leaf of legitimacy to all the chatter, and Dowd repays them with a body slam.
Agitprop.
Having seen a Mevlevi Sema in Istanbul I can say I witnessed a wonderful and moving experience. I would call it a 'bright moment'. That has not stopped me from using 'whirling dervish' the way Dowd does but I'm now rethinking it. I do not believe I should anymore because it does denigrate that experience the more I think about it.
It's turned into mackerel snappers more than whirling dervishes.
It was an incredibly dumb use of words for Coney-Barrett to reference "partisan hacks." She was supposed to be a smart one. So dumb. Right up there with "I am not a crook."
Well, get used to it, The gay guys will pander to any identity than female, rather than take turns screwing,
There was this Haynes Dansky who arranged these things in uni. But hands off the Jewish girls. Only fuck the gentiles.
The Constitution only means what a majority of supreme court justices say it means, actual text notwithstanding.
Which defeats the whole purpose of a Constitution. The whole point of writing out a constitution is so that it has a fixed meaning that everyone can understand. There is a process to change the Constitution, and it is not judicial review.
The first deep state coup in American history was Marbury V Madison, and it has been plaguing us ever since.
For those who don't know the facts behind Marbury:
The incumbent president, Adams, was a Federalist. He had just lost an election to Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican. At the time, the new president did not take office until March, so Adams was a lame duck for several months. The Democratic-Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress too. Adams' response was to try to take over the federal judiciary by creating a bunch of new judges and other judicial official at the last minute and filling them with Federalists. One of these positions was given to a man named Marbury. Marbury lived near Washington D.C. in Georgetown and was a prominent figure in Federalist politics. It would have been beyond easy for Adams' Secretary of State to deliver Marbury's commission. Especially because Adams's Secretary of State was also a prominent local Federalist who had already served in Congress and had just been confirmed as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall. (Imagine the Chief Justice and the Secretary of State being the same person today!) But somehow Marshall never managed to deliver the commission to Marbury, so he left it on his desk in March when Jefferson took over. Jefferson's Secretary of State was John Madison. Madison refused to deliver the undelivered commissions. Marbury sued Madison to get his commission, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court. So now Marshall presided over a case in which he created the initial controversy. How was he not forced to recuse himself from the case?
He then decided the case in a way that he Knew Jefferson would not challenge and thus single handedly imposed judicial review upon the American people.
"Perhaps she should have used "Tasmanian Devils" instead? Like in the Looney Toons"
Wikipedia sez: hunts prey and scavenges on carrion. Although devils are usually solitary, they sometimes eat and defecate together in a communal location.
Sounds about right.
Yes, dear, and all of America spends its weekends at Montauk.
"The New York Times mostly sees fit to print news and opinion that presents 'reality' as if what they are aiming to create is what already is."
Last night I watched the documentary Fine Lines.
"An introspective journey on the lessons life has taught 20 legends of the vertical world. At times brutally honest, other times pensive, these athletes' stories reveal the triumph of the human spirit, and the profound and unique connection formed as they overcome the world's fiercest physical and mental obstacles."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10826186/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
One of the vertical legends said she thought that people living in cities, which are an unnatural environment, are in a world where every aspect of their lives is controlled by someone else (e.g., down to when to cross the street or put out the trash) and as such, feel a need for everything else to be controlled a well in order to feel safe. Unfortunately they project that onto everyone else.
Agree or disagree, it is a wonderful documentary and refreshingly apolitical for that genre.
"Latinx"
Why hasn't Afro-American not been rebirthed as Afrx-American? The world may never know.
Post a Comment