Salvation Optics

Listening (during Lent [1]) to Ryan Adams’ latest, including “We Disappear” [2], I contemplated salvation optics, observed in different locales.

A few examples:

[1] Lent, via duckduckgo.

[2] We disappear lyrics.

I found Elizabeth Bruenig’s recent article: “A Benedictine retreat from political life cannot be the answer for today’s Christians.” interesting.

Background: Gazing at Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey and 2017.

2017 Links

A few links that may be useful as we continue into 2017:

America the Aggrieved Departs Center Stage By Thomas PM Barnett @thomaspmbarnett

Trump’s Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State by @johnrobb

What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read by Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols.

‘Trump makes sense to a grocery store owner’ by Suhasini Haidar.

University of Wisconsin Political Science Professor Kathy Cramer’s book “The Politics of Resentment” [duckduckgo summary] continues to garner attention: Mark Sommerhauser.

Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media. Merging voter data with many other sources is hardly unique to Cambridge Analytica.

Der Spiegel on Martin Schulz and Angela Merkel.

Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit by Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

Mary Beard’s S.P.Q.R. is worth reading.

Finally, the Books of Daniel, Acts and Romans offer a useful foundation.