Items of Interest: Ash Wednesday Week

What do we do when the art we love was created by a monster?
by Constance Grady (Vox). «I don’t know what to do with good art by predatory artists. So I asked some literary critics.»

Abolish the Billionaire Class
by Luke Savage (Jacobin). «Vast concentrations of wealth in the hands of the few is both how and why there is so much poverty and insecurity among working and middle-class Americans, despite there being so much wealth overall. Thanks to their cumulative labor — in factories, schools, hospitals, care homes, restaurants, and throughout the economy — an immense amount of wealth is produced in a society like the United States, but much of it is expropriated by billionaires in the form of rents and capital income. No one earns a billion dollars, but hierarchical economic structures and a skewed political system ensure some nevertheless acquire it because of the property they own. A billion dollars, let alone the over $100 billion amassed by Jeff Bezos, is not a reward proportionate to someone’s social contribution. It’s institutionalized theft, plain and simple.»

A Chicano renaissance? A new Mexican-American generation embraces the term
by Dennis Romero (NBC) The signposts of a Chicano renaissance are everywhere. On streets and college campuses, in fashion and in art, there's renewed energy around a term associated with 1960s civil rights and farm worker activism. (from July 2018)

The Passion Of The Christ was the blunt-force weapon evangelicals were looking for
by Randall Colburn (AVClub). «It’s true, especially in hindsight, that The Passion wasn’t a recruitment tool so much as it was a weapon of reaffirmation, one that tapped into wells of emotion that many Christians weren’t finding at church. For a number of Christians, the film had a radicalizing quality, with its bludgeoning dose of cruelty, shame, and guilt serving to galvanize. For those outside of the church, however? Not so much.»