early christians probably thought they were being edgy and "taking it back" like the roman empire used crosses as a symbol of fear to make people stay in line or else they get tortured up on the cross. Still, it's an essentially passive thing to use your oppressors symbol. They also used the fish symbol for Jesus but that's not as prevalent.
it doesn't matter how much gold there is it's all relative, it's just better than fiat based on nothing. You can use dollars to buy gold but the dollars are really IOUs that nations could use to get their gold back from where it was stored, that's what convertibility means here
we've seen the rhetoric from dems trying to turn USA citizens anti russia after were allies since the cold war, it's probably mainly to help them win elections with a boogeyman, they made up the trump russia connection for example. Putin probably saw that as a threat.
he even has a monkeyish name