Public Health Policy Reviews 39:
Vinyasa Bliss #4 - Sacred Sunday - Featuring a Christian hymn from Belarus.
Kate, a Belarusian foreign language academic, is singing a Christian chant from Belarus.
As we mentioned in Public Health Policy Reviews last week, we are featuring content from a defunct literary promotion event called SENSATION~translation, held in Rochester, New York, this past Spring.
Vinyasa Bliss features Kate’s connection with a Belarusian Christian hymn this morning. Kate, unable to recall the title, revealed that she had learned it in her church during childhood. We worked hard to produce a professional-sounding version of the chant with Kate.
However, we think Kate’s acapella version of the song was exceptional. Therefore, we are sharing both versions of her singing the hymn.
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An acapella version of Kate’s Christian song from Belarus.
Kate and one other contributor to Public Health Policy Reviews are Christians.
But some of us are non-believers, and we even have Muslim contributors. While PHPR is in the United States, our researchers, writers, and contributors come from the Middle East, Belarus, Romania, Albania, Germany, and Great Britain.
We are multicultural, and the definition of “globalists”– two sociology categories that are definitely out of favor with the growing right-wing and nativist-traditionalist movements that currently are sweeping across America and Europe.
Nevertheless, the fact that some of us practice yoga, some practice Christianity, and some practice Islam means we can help make the cultural and intellectual case for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).
As we wrote previously in our Vinyasa Bliss Sacred Sunday series, we believe sound therapy is a component of self-care. Sound therapy can be as healing as focusing on breathing and moving your body systematically.
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Kate from Belarus.
Kate’s Belarusian Christian chant is another song that—like the chant from last week—engenders a reflective mood today.
The week and some events forced us to think deeply about regrets, what it means to be complicit in a social and economic system that exploits people for profit, and the possibility of redemption. Abusing people for financial gain or personal gratification—even if the abuser is not aware of how they are complicit in systems that promote such exploitation—damages both the victim and the perpetrator.
Starting tomorrow, we will address many of these themes as we post the first installment of a two-week, ten-chapter project titled VALKYRIES: White Women, Public Health, and Political Policy in the TRUMP Era.
We believe White female voters in America and the men who support their civil rights and social freedoms will decide the 2024 US presidential election in November. VALKYRIES will examine prominent women in Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.
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Why do so many women believe in and promote “Trumpism?”
Left-wing and liberal political women in the US say MAGA is an ideology and social movement that is eliminating their sexual autonomy, reproductive freedoms, personal health, financial independence, and social standing. Yet Trump is on the verge of returning to power this fall, with ample assistance from the US Supreme Court.
Like millions of others, we observed Joe Biden’s disastrous performance during the first nationally televised presidential debate on CNN this past Thursday night. Mr. Biden’s current physical and mental state is deteriorating fast.
Astoundingly, Biden, his wife, and his allies in the national Democratic Party are currently engaging in a media campaign to convince US voters concerned about the president’s declining health that we did not see what we all just observed.
What is worse is that otherwise intelligent female politicians like Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) are eagerly assisting the Biden administration’s efforts to “gaslight” the American people.
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The 118th US Congressional portrait of Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Representative Crockett should know better.
Congresswoman Crockett is a Black woman from a state that reveals the brutal nature of MAGA policies on women and children under Governor Gregg Abbott every day. Her district, Texas’ 30th – is primarily populated by African American and Hispanic constituents who will suffer the most under a second Trump regime.
Did people forget the ghoulish public spectacle of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and California Governor Gavin Newsome exploiting former California Senator Dianne Feinstein (1933-2033) for power by last fall?
Why are American voters allowing the Democratic party to blatantly risk US freedom and international democracy on a man who needed A LOT of help from First Lady Jill Biden to walk down a short step off the stage on Thursday?
Elder abuse is also a public health issue.
If Dianne Feinstein had gone out a day after her unfortunate wheeled-in appearance and led a barn burner of a rally like Biden did in NC, I'd have agreed with you here. None of Joe's surrogates are suggesting we didn't see what we saw. That's the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. What they are saying is that they're not bailing on the nominee the voters selected based on a disastrous 30 minutes where it was clear Joe was overprepared. I blame Joe's campaign managers for that debacle. There is no "debate" when a convicted felon is given two minutes at a time to just gish-gallop. The moderators didn't even do the minimum requirements for follow-up. When Trump said he spoke to Putin about Ukraine and his desire to reclaim the country, WHY wasn't the next question from the moderators, "you spoke to Putin about that?"
Watching the focus groups of undecided voters after the debate, it was clear that nothing in the race had changed. The race is still between a stuttering old man in decline whose administration is capably running the country, and a convicted felon rapist who is incapable of answering questions or telling the truth and who will install Trump sycophants at every level of government if elected to make sure Project 2025 is implemented. Watch the polls, listen to the focus groups. Two weeks from now, we'll see nothing has changed.
That said, Biden's campaign needs to radically rethink how they're running this election. Joe needs a town hall where he leaves the figures behind and just talks to people. That's where he excels.