This week in 480 BCE, two and a half millennia ago, the Persians led by Xerxes I realized that he had lost in his attempt to rule ancient Greece. The first major battle between the Greeks and Persians took place at Thermopylae. Despite the large Persian army of between 100,000 and 500,000 soldiers, the several hundred Spartans stopped them at Thermopylae for several days. Thermopylae is a narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea.

The Greek navy used that time to prepare for the naval defeat of the Persians at the straits of Salamis. Essentially, The Greek navy used a similar battle plan at Thermopylae. The Greek navy forced Xerxes’ navy into the narrow straits between the island of Salamis and the mainland.

The straits of Salamis

The Persian fleet was approximately 800 ships, and the Greeks had 370. Xerxes lost 300 ships to 40 Greek vessels at the Battle of Salamis. The Persians also lost 20,000 lives in the battle compared to 4,000 Greeks. Xerxes watched the naval battle from Mount Egaleo, which overlooked the straits of Salamis. It was a stunning defeat for Xerxes. The Greeks stopped the Persians, and in the process, Xerxes’ brother, the admiral of the Persian fleet, was killed during the naval battle.

What can we learn from the Greco-Perian Wars beyond that it was the most important battle that saved the Western world and mindset? It intrigues me that the fear factor is the central issue. The Greeks feared and acted. The Persians thought they were invincible and didn’t fear. However, that lesson was learned long, long ago.

I’m sure that Donald the Dumb, our former president, couldn’t find Greece or Persia on a map even if someone told him that Persia is present-day Iran. Trump wanted to be a 21st-century great leader. His mentor is Putin, who sees himself as a new Peter the Great.

Trump has been a loser for most of his life. Fear has stopped him from trying to achieve his greatness. The fear of failure, again, created a worse situation for himself and America. His slogan, Make America Great Again, is merely a projection of himself. Within his mind, Trump doesn’t want to continue to fail. Therefore, he acts like Xerxes while knowing he has nothing to offer. Fear motivates him to lie and to act macho.

Trump’s fear of failure resonated with 30% of his Republican base. Therefore, his minions merely replicated their mentor. Slogans like Make America Great Again function as their projection.

The MAGA minions want to return to the good old days before the war...the Civil War. Back in those days, white males ruled the roost. White males enslaved people for financial gain. Southern plantation owners made money by having blacks do the work for them. Slavery has been here since 1619.

White supremacy is an attempt to control blacks due to the fear that they could do better than them. Racism and sexism are based on one’s birth, which determines their place in society. White supremacists want blacks and women to know their place in our society. They also don’t like immigration unless the immigrants are Anglo-Saxons.

The South lost the Civil War, but the North lost the peace. The South rebuilt their old mindset in the South with Jim Crow laws, the KKK, and the melancholy feeling of Gone with the Wind. They had rigged elections for a century, even though most blacks couldn’t vote. They constructed 1,500 public memorials and monuments. A third of the statues are in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.

In the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol, each state can contribute two statues of a famous person from that state. The Statuary Hall contains several Confederate officers, the president and vice president of the Confederacy, and the rest were supporters of the South. Robert E. Lee and another general of the Confederacy have been removed in the last several years.

I have traveled to Germany several times and enjoyed sightseeing in places like Berlin, Bonn, Stuttgart, Cologne, Nuremberg, Berchtesgaden, Konstanz, and Munich. I never saw a statue of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, Ribbentrop, or Goring. There are none. However, America is still fighting the Civil War with statues of leaders of the Confederacy.

I wonder what MAGA Republicans will do when Trump is convicted. Where will his minions want to put a statue of Trump?

In the park

Or at meetings of evangelical leaders praying over the golden statue of Trump.

This is an excellent video of the Battle of Salamis.

This is another historically accurate video of the Battle of Thermopylae.