iconoclasm, the state, and payment processors

This is a bit of a long rambly one. I am not citing my sources which is bad journalism. But if any of this historical stuff interests you I'll recommend a few things at the end. Use this footnote.1 So probably one of the most important events (really, sequence of events) in Byzantine history is the so-called Byzantine Iconoclasm — a century or so of heated arguments in Byzantine public life and leadership in the mid-700s CE about the correctness of the worship of icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The term "iconoclasm" comes from Greek, which of course at the time was the predominant language of the Eastern Romans. It means something along the lines of "the struggle of the images". In essence, the argument around iconoclasm was about whether or not Christianity (in the Eastern Orthodox fashion) should or should not allow images of holy/religious/divine figures to stand in for the divine. Obviously, Christianity (along with other of the Abrahamic faiths) cares deeply about the…