April 2026 – education and deconstruction.com

Knocking Previous Prezzes – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

As is well known, Trump’s goal is to surpass all previous American presidents– in terms of political retaliation, profiteering and power accumulation. Here’s a song about that.

KNOCKING PREVIOUS PREZZES

sung to the tune of “Takin’ Care of Business” with apologies to Bachman Turner Overdrive, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s reversing all before him and ignoring global warming

and has great, great plans for his Party.

He’s supreme in his fakin’. In-that, he’s surpassed Obama and Reagan

in the world, he made topsy-turvy.

He’s committed numerous crimes but never done jail time.

He’s got a heartless, shameless mob to fill his needs.

He’s got his loyal envoys and his militaries deployed,

to exceed his predecessors’ deeds.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

With some Middle Eastern putsches, he’s exceeding the warring Bush’s,

in his vengeful blood-for-oil guile.

Alleged sexual predator, he had whores at his resort. He and Clinton are in the Epstein file.

While the deficit balloons, Trump’s going to the moon.

He showed us he had to outdo JFK.

It’s serious issues he avoids. Like Nixon, he’s paranoid

in his quest to immortalize his name.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Trump’s reversing all before him and ignoring global warming

and has great, great plans for his Party.

He’s supreme in his fakin’. In-that, he’s surpassed Obama and Reagan

in the world, he made topsy-turvy.

He’s committed numerous crimes but never done jail time.

He’s got a heartless, shameless mob to fill his needs.

He’s got his loyal envoys and his militaries deployed,

to exceed his predecessors’ deeds.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Knocking previous prezzes.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Knocking previous prezzes.

Knocking previous prezzes…

A Flower Traveled in My Blood

The Book of the Week is “A Flower Traveled in My Blood, The Incredible Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children” by Haley Cohen Gilliland, published in 2025.

In 1966, General Juan Carlos Ongania became the military dictator of Argentina. He oppressed hippies– arresting, torturing and killing them pursuant to their unacceptable clothing, hair and music. He imposed anti-capitalist economic reforms that caused inflation to soar. Unrest erupted on the streets of Buenos Aires.

People who wanted to become revolutionaries, joined one of the “alphabet soup” of political groups; mostly they were students or jobless youths. One such group was the Montonero, which got combat-operations training in Cuba. The most extreme groups attacked government forces, detonated bombs and effected kidnappings. They were mostly James Bond wannabes.

In the mid-1970’s, military leader Jorge Rafael Videla came to power. His police-force allegedly investigated fraud, but in the second half of the 1970’s alone, that force abducted, tortured and killed or “disappeared” an estimated thirty thousand people, including children.

One woman got so frustrated going around to law enforcement and government offices looking for her disappeared son that, in late April 1977, she staged a “sit-in” with other women in the main public square in Buenos Aires. They were risking their lives, as Argentina’s dictator banned assembly of three or more people.

The group marched weekly, and were eventually named “Madres de Plaza de Mayo.” Their mothers and mothers-in-law began a letter-writing campaign to all different parties– the Pope, ambassadors, journalists, the UN, Red Cross, human rights organizations, etc.– who might help them find their grown-children and grandchildren who had been taken as newborns or toddlers and adopted mostly by military couples who wanted children.

In October 1983, Argentina was to hold its first democratic election for its top leader in forty years. The military thus signed the National Pacification Law– pardoning itself for all of its past crimes. Further, the giant cover-up regarding the disappeared, continued. Even so, the aforementioned mothers and grandmothers were beginning to track down adoptees– proving their blood relations through genetic testing.

Read the book to learn about Argentina’s decades of: political gyrations (and those of other South American countries due to an actual conspiracy), and complications experienced by, associated with and progress made by, the movement begun by those intent on finding their disappeared loved ones.

Strongmen – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, published in 2021. In this hodgepodge of a volume, the author described the traits and behaviors of a “strongman” through a few real-life examples of dictators of the past hundred years.

A strongman is a male leader who finds ways (that happen to be nefarious) to maximize and maintain his power; including: causing needless deaths and ruined lives in the forms of propaganda (repeated scapegoating, generating crises and other brainwashing techniques), waging war, engaging in sexual conquests, seeking political dominance and enriching himself, usually through looting resources from the territory or territories he rules.

In October 1922, in an Italy of about forty million people, approximately thirty thousand people comprising the Fascist Party appointed Mussolini as prime minister. In the next two decades, in order to rule by fear and force, Mussolini formed various political and military groups, and passed laws that violated human rights. He incited excessive violence, and had dissidents killed.

In July 1925, Mussolini pardoned all political criminals (those who would help him stay in power). But by 1926, he had run out of money. Fortunately for him, he had friends in high places. Thomas Lamont– his contact at the American financial institution, J.P. Morgan, arranged a loan of one hundred million dollars for him. At that time, Hitler actually looked up to Mussolini and eventually got friendly with him, in order to get mentored. By 1933, the German industrialists had fallen for Hitler’s populist rhetoric.

In 1965, Mobutu, who engaged in drugs and arms sales, (with the help of the CIA) came to power in Zaire. He, along with a number of other dictators, had been war heroes, so they had military backing. Beginning in 1969, oil money allowed Gaddafi to give his government a socialistic bent– funding Libyans’ education, housing and other basic needs.

In 1994, Italy’s Berlusconi controlled very nearly all the messaging heard and seen by his people. He crafted laws to: give himself a get-out-of-jail-free card, and his businesses, to weasel out of legal and financial trouble. His propaganda screamed that immigrants were criminals. Gaddafi and Berlusconi (who should have been enemies) became besties– keeping their friends close and their enemies closer. Libya got weapons from Italy, and Italy got oil from Libya.

In Trump’s United States, “Women advance their careers by making it easier for the leader and his inner circle to harm other women.” Another strongman technique Trump uses is to put his assets in foreign bank accounts. In 2014, Eric Trump said, “We [Trump Organization] don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need from Russia.”

Like Berlusconi, Trump and his media outlet, Fox News, have repeatedly, emphatically smeared immigrants as criminals, and he has used his military, ICE, to detain or deport them. The author named locations of various detention camps that had inhumane conditions: in Florida– Homestead, and in Texas– Clint, McAllen, Rio Grande, and El Paso del Norte.

In sum, once the strongman has stolen all he can get from his citizens, his next tricks are to negotiate a peace treaty and schedule elections.

Read the book to learn much more about how the above-named and a few others have used strongman tactics to turn into not-so-benign dictators.

ENDNOTE: Here’s a song that describes Trump’s strongman tactics.

MODERN STRONGMAN

sung to the tune of “Modern Woman” with apologies to Billy Joel and to whomever else the rights may concern.

You see Trump on the idiot box touting his high-tech war-toys of his cronies’ design.

With his continual cruel smears he aggravates the tension. Tries to save face while losing his mind.

Now Trump’s in trouble. He fired all the intellectuals. He always figures voters aren’t very smart.

Or maybe he hopes his hype covers up his conflicts. Oh, he’s got to use PR tricks ’cause his wrongdoing’s off the charts.

He always puts on an ACT of ranting-frat-boy modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man. He understands just what he’s doing. He’s a modern strongman.

His mean streak is exceptionally unprofessional. He’s got a lot of cockiness, it’s easy to see. You don’t want to be rude but you get so furious when he’s so injurious to American democracy.

He’s got bile and he’s got billionaires’ money and lots of attorneys so his-foes, he quickly disarms. His slow rise means you may not realize, YOU’RE jeopardized by his gradual harm.

He’s got his plan of attack and got the power-play knack of modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man. He understands just what he’s doing. He’s a modern strongman.

The king won’t die. There is no president. He says he loves you but he treats you unkind. In the morning he detains you. You’re accused by your neighbors. It’s a cagey situation for an old fascist guy.

Times have changed, and you cry in vain, lately. He’s become extreme in his bad attitude. His cock-and-bull just used to be for kicks. But now he controls your politics. After 2026, you might get a clue.

You can’t relax and face the facts of modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man, he forces your hand in the things he’s doing.

He’s a modern strongman. He’s a modern strongman.

He’s got the sociopathic zip that allows the grip of the modern strongman.

Haiti After the Earthquake

The Book of the Week is “Haiti After the Earthquake” by Paul Farmer, published in 2011. In this hodgepodge of a volume, the author (a medical doctor and cofounder of the organizations, Partners in Health and Zanmi Lasante) and some of his contacts, described the complex set of factors that go into helping people deal with the aftermath of a disaster in a Third World territory.

Haiti’s chaotic political history brings into question whether it has ever been a sovereign territory with sincerely elected Haitian officials (without foreign overseers and funders) for more than a few months since 1804.

There are various major reasons Haiti is still poverty stricken in the twenty-first century. Haiti lacks:

adequately functioning systems of basic services (healthcare, education, housing and food procurement) that allow self-rule;
an inspirational leader with ambitious plans to start the said service-systems with a staff who’s sufficiently experienced and competent to do so;
the money to start the said service-systems, and continue them even after disasters strike;
a way to break its centuries-long cycle of receiving outside aid; such aid prompts its dependence on countries which have strategic interests in it; such aid is perpetuated because it never learns how to create its own service-systems.

Each system is incestuous with the others: better education leads to better healthcare, housing and agriculture, and the improvements feed on themselves.

Haiti was hit with multiple storms in 2008 which brought mudslides and flooding. In January 2010, it was hit with an extremely strong earthquake. In the wake of the latter, a huge percentage of: its buildings were destroyed (including government buildings due to shoddy construction) and its population died (most of which was in poor health in the first place).

Within days, the international community sent a deluge of humanitarian aid workers to sift through the wreckage and treat the numerous injured and ill survivors. The author and his colleagues were immensely frustrated at the way administering of aid was very poorly organized, and at the severe shortages of resources, such as medical supplies, drugs and transportation.

One common scenario was that of a ten-year-old girl whose father died in the earthquake. To prevent her family’s starvation, her mother went to work transporting produce to the marketplace to be sold by other women. The girl thus had to take care of her four younger siblings in the family’s hovel made of sticks and debris. The girl was repeatedly raped. There were numerous reports of after-dark sexual assaults of females at squat-toilets which were a long walk from their makeshift housing.

When a disaster hits Haiti, the Haitian people are blamed when they can’t bootstrap themselves into independence. Unluckily, Haiti lacks valuable resources such as oil or minerals, and it has been stripped of its forests (for various reasons). So there are many other regional areas in which aid-providing countries would rather locate their military bases.

Read the book to learn much more about the stakeholders, issues and traumas involved in helping Haiti get back on its feet after so much devastation.

It’s an Uncertain World – BONUS POST

BREAKING NEWS: “America Spring” will continue until the media schedules the “Trump Is Out [he’s fired]” show via the 25th Amendment. Until then, here’s a song listing just a few of the people Trump has fired.

UNCERTAIN WORLD

sung to the tune of “End of the World” with apologies to R.E.M. and to whomever else the rights may concern.

What’s great? Trump parts with experts, truth-speakers and do-gooders, and his loyal cult is not afraid.

He fired: Streater, Hayden, Tillerson, Bunnell, Slaughter, Wilcox, Kruse, Grisham, Bolton, Geer, Doherty, Musk, Haugh, Kelly, Priebus, McEntarfer, Primus, Niceta, Matthews, Monarez, Chatfield, Salehi, Brown, down with a fight.

Flynn, Yachnin, Ramaswamy, Yates, and a government to fire, and Comey, Price, Krause, Linick, team by team, Richards, Samuels, trumped, Sessions cropped. Long, Atkinson, Fagan, Fine, then uh-oh O’Donnell, Noem, Perlmutter, Scaramucci, but it won’t do.

Save your wealth. Serve your stealth. Disturbed, and the world bleeds. Grim, Abruzzo, Martin, Bondi, chummy with the enraptured and the smeared and then gone. Right? Right!

ooh Hilton, patriotic Hanson slam fired blight Right. Feeling very iced.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And it’s on our dime.

Dellinger, Bharara. Don’t get caught in TV hearing slash and burn. Return. This is like a Stalin purge. Who cares about a uniform, Cook burning, bloodletting. Every move escalate. Ulterior motives. Insist it’s secret. Gaslight Bannon. Lewandowski. Low down. Low down. Watch your deals. crush crush uh-oh Be mean with no fear. Cavalier. Renegade. Deteriorating clear. A plethora, a plethora of lies, Pekoske. No solutions. Offers no alternatives. In droves, resign.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

The Right has defended ICE, gone mental. Krebs, Bedoya, Burrows. Frat boys tow the line. Leading billionaires. Letting go Shogan. Cutting loose thousands. Bloodbath Party. Shapley. Hellish scheme boom ooh argh hate riot, slam like heck. Right? Right!

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline…

The Picnic

The Book of the Week is “The Picnic, A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain” by Matthew Longo, published in 2024. This volume, whose language is awkward in spots, detailed some of the changes– especially in Hungary– that led to major transformations of balances of power in the world.

In sum, thousands of people acting together (rather than one dissident here and there) whose dissatisfaction reached critical mass, are what forced Eastern Europe to radically change politically, culturally, and socially, starting in the late 1980’s. Or, as the American 1960’s counter-culture expressed it: “United we stand. Divided they catch us one by one.”

The author called people who fled East Germany at the tail end of the 1980’s, refugees. They were actually immigrants. Refugees are fleeing from war, anarchy or starvation where their lives are in danger 24/7. Immigrants move to a different country because their own country dooms them to a life of crushing oppression, but no immediate life-threatening danger.

Anyway, by the late 1980’s, there appeared signs that the Soviet yoke of Communism in Hungary was becoming frayed, as its leaders sensed the people were approaching the point at which beheadings or a firing squad of themselves was in the offing.

In 1988,

“Moscow” (the authority that ruled all Soviet satellites, which included Hungary) allowed Hungarians to form non-Communist parties, although the new parties had only advisory power;
Moscow restored the freedom of assembly;
Hungary’s economy was tanking, so its Communist functionaries appointed as its prime minister, a young economist– Miklos Nemeth, a believer in free markets and democratic elections– who had studied in the US;
Moscow began to allow the issuance of special travel visas for families to drive into Austria to shop for Western consumer goods with a $350 government subsidy.

And in 1989,

The Hungarian minister of state delivered a radio address, shocking listeners (who had been brainwashed by Soviet propaganda for decades) with the truth about the 1956 uprising and incredibly, he wasn’t shot or hanged by his comrades;
In Budapest, police allowed a public protestor’s recitation of a poem about tyranny;
The Hungarian prime minister asked Mikhail Gorbachev to withdraw Soviet troops from Hungary, and the latter agreed to withdraw a few, as a public relations gesture;
Through Gorbachev’s permissive policy that each Soviet satellite’s leader could take whatever political actions he deemed necessary to keep the peasants from revolting, Nemeth ordered the dismantling of electrified barbed wire at Hungary’s borders with Austria and Czechoslovakia;
Some of the Stasi (the ubiquitous, brutal [Soviet] East German spying agency– the new breed of “Nazis” after WII), actually directed East Germans toward a border-crossing location, or stood by and let Hungarians and West Germans help the East Germans run through the gap in the barbed wire, in order to cross the border to Austria or Czechoslovakia.

There were countless other societal changes taking place in Eastern Europe. In June 1989, a few Hungarian dissidents who were forming a new political party, planned a picnic as a symbol of friendship among Hungarians, East Germans and Austrians.

In October 1989, the GDR turned forty years old. “There were lavish parties, honoring years of Soviet-East German cooperation.” Small wonder why the peasants were revolting. By November 1989, the Soviets had secretly moved all their nuclear weapons located in Hungary, to Ukraine. By the dawn of the 1990’s, the Hungarian Communist Party had ultimately renamed itself the “Hungarian Republic.” BUT a one-party State is not a democracy!

The former Stasi spies who got new jobs after the USSR dissolved, felt right at home helping Western businesses seek new markets in Eastern Europe. For, skills required for the jobs included exploitation, expropriation, and data collection.

The author wrote that a compromise between capitalism and socialism is possible. In 2009, he had a reunion with an East German couple who had fled to West Germany. They were very anti-Communist, but also shunned using crassly commercial, modern technology such as mobile phones and email. They didn’t care that they weren’t keeping up with the Joneses. Their experience in the East taught them to be grateful for the material possessions they did have.

But it’s actually not that simple. If everyone disengaged completely from their automated lifestyles and electronic communications, the world economy would crash.

Read the book to learn about various East Germans who left their homeland for what they perceived to be a better life after seeing how the non-Communist world lived, and about some of the historical changes wrought in their region of the globe.

Iran’s Fighting Back – BONUS POST

Here’s a little ditty about what’s unsurprisingly going on.

IRAN’S FIGHTING BACK

sung to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back” with apologies to The Angels and to whomever else the rights may concern.

spoken:

After 2020, Trump never went away. He hung around and distracts us with radical actions every day and night. And when we don’t agree with him, he says and does things that aren’t very nice.

Iran’s fighting back and threatening more trouble.