Electoral wars   The Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden for president and the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump for another four years in the White House.    These two nominating Conventions opened the formal 2020 election season. Joe Biden’s Convention was behind masks and television screens. The Convention of Trump, imperial in purpose and centered around his family and himself, was out in the open, without masks, facing the beautiful Greek columns of the White House and the explosive fireworks at the Lincoln Memorial.   Hubris   But behind Trump’s extravagant Hollywood affair, there’s hubris and contempt for tradition and the law. Trump is involving his advisors and cabinet officials in his private business of running for reelection.    For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an official diplomatic mission to the Middle East went all the way to Jerusalem to praise Trump and to speak to the Republican National Convention why Americans ...

The most deleterious of the effects of the industrialization of farming in the United States is the drastic decline of the small white family farmers and the near disappearance of the black family farmers.   Rise and fall   In 1900, there were 746,717 black farmers in the United States. In the next ten years, by 1910, black farmers increased by 19.6 percent, becoming 893,377. The next decade, black farmers increased by 3.6 percent, reaching in 1920 their highest number ever: 925,710.    Then white racism triggered an unstoppable decline and fall. White society, its government, and large farmers hit the landed black farmers with a ton of bricks. Most black farmers abandoned farming.   The government waged an invisible war of cheating the former slaves of their promised forty acres and a mule. Large white farmers, agribusiness, and government agencies at the county, state, and federal level scared black farmers, giving them the wrong information, denying them loan...

Bronze fighters in the Battle of Salamis by Achilleas Vasileiou, Salamis. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos   August-September 2020 marks the 2,500-year anniversary of the battle of Salamis the Greeks fought and won against the vast invading Persian army of Xerxes. The decisive naval battle took place in the waters between the tiny island of Salamis and the coast of Athenian Attica in late September 480 BCE.   The anger of Xerxes   The Persian king Xerxes was the son of Darius who in 490 BCE had failed to conquer Greece. Xerxes embarked on the second invasion of Greece to revenge his father’s humiliating defeat. He wanted to settle scores.    Xerxes could not handle reality. He was infuriated that small Greek poleis (city-states) in the Ionian region of Asia Minor, which he claimed to be part of his empire, remained independent.    These Greek states sought and received military assistance from Athens. Moreover, Athens did more than expel the Persian forces...

I am not an economist and I have a bad taste for money. No doubt Plato and Aristotle had something to do with my economic views.     Economy and civilization   Since childhood I have not paid much attention to money. However, since we live in a society, country, and world run by money, I had to adjust my dislikes to reality. I earned a salary for work, had to purchase a home, and must pay for my food, clothes, computer, etc.   Humans have always had to exchange goods. The Greeks invented the silver coin in the sixth century BCE. That innovation facilitated what has come to be known as economy, which at first meant the working out of just relations and costs and benefits of the household and, eventually, those of the polis (city state).    Without enough coins, a family could drop to poverty, destitution and slavery. A polis without silver would not be able to pay its troops to fight wars, build warships, government buildings, temples, or walls for national ...