September 2026 – education and deconstruction.com

My Rights – 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.]

In the 1990’s in corporate America, the outsourcing of lower-cost workers (for telephone and tech labor, especially) to nations other than the United States, was a trend. It turned out to be NOT such a good idea, due to cultural clashes and linguistic misunderstandings.

AI will play out similarly. Linguistic misunderstandings and software glitches will lead to lawsuits. When financial losses from lawsuits reach critical mass, live people will have to sort it out.

So regardless of whether the world’s biggest attention-whore (Trump) urges the US government to regulate AI, the profit motive will drive the trend.

The profit-motive and attention-motive drive Trump’s shenanigans. In the latter case, the only thing worse than being talked about is… NOT being talked about! Here’s the song his handlers are singing now on his behalf.

MY RIGHTS

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

BlackBALLED by my old friends. We used to be real close.

Told ’em I am making America great.

I called the shots. Bought the House. I rocketed to the top post.

Now the GOP’s going to take over every state.

America, don’t worry. I made us again great.

Don’t you dare tell me I can’t have-a-third-term.

I don’t care what you say anymore. I know MY rights.

I say we can’t have fake news. This is my show.

I always said you have to let me have another chance (I always said you had to).

I always said we’re a victim of immiGRANTS (I always said).

You’re always wrong (always wrong). I am so strong (am so strong).

And you can’t speak your mind. I’m the greatest of all time.

I will tell Fox it must cover me in every last race.

Then I’ll tell you you must do whatever I say.

And sooner or later I’ll own outer space.

Anyway, it’s okay. I get sued every day.

America, don’t worry. I made us again great.

Don’t you dare tell me I can’t have-a-third-term.

I don’t care what you say anymore. I know MY rights.

I say we can’t have fake news. This is my show.

I always said you have to let me have another chance (I always said you had to).

I always said we’re a victim of immiGRANTS (I always said).

You’re always wrong (always wrong). I am so strong (am so strong).

And you can’t speak your mind. I’m the greatest of all time.

I don’t care what you say anymore. I know MY rights.

I say we can’t have fake news. This is my show.

Go. Eff yourself. It’s MY rights.

Chasing Freedom

The Book of the Week is “Chasing Freedom, Coming of Age at the End of Empire” by Simukai Chigudu, published in 2025.

Born around 1986, the author told the life stories of his parents and himself (all three were dark-skinned), and conveyed some history of Zimbabwe and other African countries. The two takeaways are these: It is impossible for anyone to escape irony and hypocrisy, regardless of one’s time and place, due to biases formed during one’s lifetime; there are similarities in political behavior the world over.

Chigudu’s parents both believed in sending him to the best schools, first in Rhodesia, where they lived, and then elsewhere. The Rhodies (whites) at his rich kids’ school were racists and bullies.

The 1970’s saw the trend of James Bond wannabes planning to foment revolution in many countries of the world; including the United States, a few of whose political groups were: the Symbionese Liberation Army, MOVE, Weathermen, and the Black Panthers. In Africa, it was the alphabet soup of ANC, MPLA, SWAPO, ZAPU and ZANU.

By 1971, Rhodesia’s whites constituted less than five percent of its population: about six million. But whites ruled the country. In 1974, Chigudu’s political-dissident father moved to Uganda to attend university, having been exiled by Zimbabwe. He had been inspired to join the armed struggle for his country’s liberation. He studied Marxism, Pan-Africanism, and white supremacy of Zimbabwe’s white leader, Ian Smith. Chigudu’s mother initially found religion when searching for her place in the world. After she met Chigudu’s father at university, she began to question why Christianity was paternalistic.

Beginning in 1980, Robert Mugabe (dark-skinned), who ruled by fear and force in Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe), actively consolidated his power by inciting his base of dark-skinned, dissatisfied, poor, angry young men who were desperate for social belonging– to fight for the decolonization of their homeland. He whitewashed history, blaming colonialism rather than his own corruption, for the country’s problems.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, Zimbabwe’s government was imposing land reform– seizing farmland owned by whites and giving it to blacks. Whites fled the country amid the political violence. The blacks who had previously been workers on the whites’ farms stayed, even when they didn’t get to own the land, because they had nowhere else to go. Kind of like after the American Civil War, when freed slaves remained where they were– it was the only life with which they were familiar.

The United States expressed phony outrage at the land reform, claiming Mugabe was undemocratic. But as usual, the United States was cherry-picking a country to punish for ulterior political motives. Its plan was allegedly going to usher in “peaceful democratic change and equitable growth.”

The ultimate irony is that the author ended up doing graduate studies at Oxford– the institution of his homeland’s colonizer. Read the book to learn a boatload more about the author’s quest to allay his emotional trouble, and find himself.

Hacks and Todd Blanche – BONUS POST

Here’s a song about the sorry state of affairs at the Justice Department.

HACKS AND TODD BLANCHE

sung to the tune of “Jack and Diane” with apologies to John Cougar Mellencamp and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Little ditty ’bout hacks and Todd Blanche.

They’re DOJ busybodies in Never-Never Land.

Jeanine Pirro thinks she’s a reality show star.

Blanche does witch hunts similar to Bill Barr’s.

Suckin’ at prosecuting, the accused who walk free.

Blanche pushes Trump’s crap. Lawyers quit. There’s mutiny.

Why haven’t Blanche and his gang been impeached?

Congress and their-donors are crooks, and they do what they please.

Sigh. Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone.

Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone. With Fox on.

Jeanine set us back on the “reflecting pool” of the moment.

Her dispatches were as disgusting as VP JD’s.

Well then there Todd Blanche is Trump’s chump without pity.

Todd Blanche says “Slaves, you ain’t SEEing nothing.”

Fox is playing. Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone. Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone.

No rule-of-law for them. Others they probe. Ain’t a man alive who can save their souls. They boost Fox’s ratings as long as they can. Next charade is coming around real soon. A few’ll get country-club pris-ON.

Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone. Oh yeah, the Right keeps on, long after the thrill of bitching is gone.

Little ditty ’bout hacks and Todd Blanche. They get their kicks criminalizing our land.

The Snowball

The Book of the Week is “The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” by Alice Schroeder, published in 2008. This authorized biography described how one of the world’s richest men, accumulated his wealth.

Born at the end of August 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, Buffett was obsessed with making money. He became the general partner of the eventual conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, an initially money-losing textile company.

In August 1991, a financial scandal broke at the bond brokerage, Salomon Brothers. One representative, on various occasions, had broken the law to corner a specific government-securities market in auctions. His indiscretions, about which his bosses knew and took no disciplinary action for months, cost Salomon’s competition $100 million.

Buffett was tasked with restoring Salomon’s reputation and his own, as he was a major investor in the firm. “Everything at Salomon was turned topsy-turvy as the new culture of openness went into effect.”

BUT, the late college basketball coach John Wooden always said– one should worry about one’s character, not one’s reputation. One’s character is indicated by the following cliche: “When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.” In other words, if you associate with people of bad character– stooping to their level, your own bad character will be exhibited.

Buffett helped punish the former executives at fault, by refusing to pay their legal fees and severance pay. The main perpetrator went to arbitration to restore his severance pay. The arbitrators ruled against him; he didn’t get a penny. The book’s author commented it was unclear why he was perceived to have been punished so severely.

As securities-industry insiders, those arbitrators were wisely trying to hold up the perpetrator as an example– to deter future bad behavior. Clearly, unmitigated hubris and unconscionable greed was “in the air” and was not going to stop anytime soon.

Numerous monster-sized financial scandals caused havoc in markets worldwide from the late 1980’s onward. Countless innocent people were fired– who had nothing to do with the scandals! The author omitted the inconvenient fact that in 1993, an unsupervised, rogue bond-department trader at Kidder Peabody caused that firm to go belly-up.

Buffett was a strong believer in pay-for performance. He drastically slashed Salomon’s employee bonuses because they didn’t perform– make money for Salomon’s shareholders, who were the real owners of the firm. Unsurprisingly, the employees were mad as hell, and thought the billionaire Buffett was a hypocrite. By the mid-1990’s, prosecutors would act aggressively to indict financial law-breakers unless they showed “extreme contrition and cooperation” when caught. How times have changed.

The leadership of the United States has been reduced to a small group of alpha males with hubris syndrome and their lawyers, running the country like a corrupt Wall Street brokerage. Economic decline is inevitable, unless the next president behaves the way Buffett did– legally requiring transparency and competence rather than loyalty. He or she must bring adult supervision to the major drains on the nation’s treasury: war / military spending, tax cuts, space exploration, and in the most recent twelve years– litigation.

Anyway, read the book to learn much, much more about Buffett, his family, and his times.

Let’s Rant – BONUS POST

This is what Trump’s handlers are singing to the GOP and Fox on his behalf.

LET’S RANT

sung to the tune of “Let’s Dance” with apologies to the Estate of David Bowie and to whomever else the rights may concern.

ah ah ah ah

Let’s rant. I oversee voting results, and we can’t lose.

Let’s rant, to my song I’m playing in the media.

Let’s rename, everywhere that shall BE my place.

Let’s rename, through my crowd, we’ll have outer space.

If you say no, I’ll fire you.

If I say AI, it’s AI, AI, AI, AI.

Because I rule over you, you must obey my crew.

We can’t let Iran, have nuclear arms, and others have any power.

Let’s rant. Let’s rant.

It’s clear I’m having a ball.

Let’s rant. It’s clear I’ll never fall.

Let’s rename. It’s all my enterprise.

Let’s rename, under my spotlight. It’s my spotlight.

If you say no, I’ll fire you.

If I say AI, it’s AI, AI, AI, AI.

Because I rule over you, you must obey my crew.

We can’t let Iran, have nuclear arms, and others have any power.

Let’s rant. I oversee voting results, and we can’t lose.

Let’s rename, under my spotlight. It’s my spotlight.

Let’s rename…

The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen

The Book of the Week is “The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, True Nature” by Lance Richardson, published in 2025.

Born in May 1927, Matthiessen was a son of white male privilege. He came of age in Connecticut, and on the eastern end of Long Island, New York State.

Matthiessen was the black sheep of the family, becoming a “bad boy” from adolescence onward; making mischief by throwing rocks at and shooting BB’s at cars. At his boarding school, he interrupted a violin quartet recital with a case of the giggles (later loosely duplicated in that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine does so at a piano recital) that became contagious. When the headmaster tried to see who started it, Matthiessen pretended to be horrified by his fellow students’ rudeness.

After his midlife crisis, in his forties, Matthiessen began to write about causes he cared about, especially environmentalism and Native Americans. In 1970, he published a nonfiction book, Sal Si Puedes. It was about environmentalism, and then-current events in America. He felt that the way people thought about nature, ran parallel to the way they thought about economic, social and political issues. “In damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”

Not everyone is intelligent enough to see how one thing leads to another; there are currently numerous Americans who– out of greed, power-hunger, jealousy of successful alpha males with hubris syndrome, or selfishness– can tolerate their own cognitive dissonance. They hold contradictory attitudes toward the different issues. The political Right constantly smears those who agree that all issues are connected– ignorantly labeling those people who believe in ethics– Liberals, Communists, and Socialists.

Mathiessen claimed he felt bad about going to live among peoples of different cultures in order to sell information about them in the books he wrote. Such exploitation has been going on for centuries among journalists and social scientists. But in some instances, the native peoples benefit when the writers publicize how the “white man” is swindling them. Pursuant to those rare political times favorable for them, the victims acquire a little bit of power and compensation for the damage done to them.

Matthiessen practiced “New Journalism” by writing a personal account of his interviews with Cesar Chavez, who advocated for the union, United Farm Workers. Chavez began a grassroots movement that tried to get Americans to value dignity and justice, amid the “worrisome national trends of materialism, poverty and ecological decline.” Good luck with that, all. That still has yet to be accomplished for the past century.

Read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know about Matthiessen– his writings, love affairs, travels, trials and tribulations.

Vance’s Star is Rising – BONUS POST

VANCE’S STAR IS RISING

sung to the tune of “Bad Moon Rising” with apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival and to whomever else the rights may concern.

I see, Vance’s star a-rising.

I see, a frat boy on the way.

I see, hypocrisy and fighting.

I see, a Trump Mini-Me today.

Forget the evil Right, or you’re bound to waste your life.

Vance’s star is on the rise.

I hear, hot air a-blowing.

I know, Trump’s end is coming soon.

I feel, the swamp is overflowing.

I see, the metaphor of-the-reflecting pool.

Forget the evil Right, or you’re bound to waste your life.

Vance’s star is on the rise.

Let’s all, go vote together.

Keep calm. Two years will fly by.

We’ll have to endure more nasty-endeavors. Our taxes are stolen by-the-by.

Well, forget the evil Right, or you’re bound to waste your life.

Vance’s star is on the rise.

How to Save the Amazon

The Book of the Week is “How to Save the Amazon, A Journalist’s Quest for Answers” by Dom Phillips and various authors, published in 2025. This hodgepodge of a volume listed various issues related to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, which spans eight different countries. Nevertheless, the title was misleading in that all the articles except for one about Cost Rica– were about the Amazon region in Brazil.

Over the decades, there has been a tug of war between monetizing of, and attempting to enforce laws to protect the Amazon region, involving:

changing politics
supply and demand for real estate
supply and demand for products such as fossil fuels, fish, fruits and nuts.

Anyway, simply enacting laws, and then underfunding and understaffing the laws’ enforcement NEVER works in such an environmentally delicate, resource-rich region where the people born there have a simple lifestyle, and aren’t sufficiently powerful to defend their way of life against exploitation of their land.

For decades, business people have worked around the Amazon river in gold mining, commercial fishing, logging, rubber tapping, farming, oil wildcatting, and cattle ranching (beef production).

On and off, Brazil’s government agencies, and the Pastoral Land Commission (a Catholic organization) have assisted the Indigenous people who have small farms in the region. There had been programs similar to those implemented in the western United States in the 1800’s, of homesteading and sharecropping. BUT, more than half of the population of Brazil consists of Amazon-region residents (Indigenous peoples) whose dark skin makes them subject to discrimination.

There are tens of different Indigenous peoples who choose to live in the region, isolating themselves from the rest of the world. Their mentality is described in the song, “Colors of the Wind” from the Disney movie soundtrack Pocahontas. One Indigenous individual interviewed by one of the authors wrote, “That land could be owned by a single person is unthinkable to us because everyone’s survival depends on it.”

The Indigenous peoples and NGOs are the only people who should be stewards of the land, because they live and work there, on the ground. Outsiders are mostly bureaucrats and exploiters.

One can get a bank to finance cattle-ranching, as beef production is a major way to make the land productive. So the government encourages homesteaders to go into cattle-ranching. However, it deforests the land.

The entrepreneurs behave like organized crime syndicates– ruthlessly killing people who obstruct their illegal profiteering, and donating big bucks to political candidates to perpetuate their lawlessness.

In addition, ironically, the Indigenous people aid and abet the entrepreneurs! They serve as slave labor in the entrepreneurs’ businesses because their education and skills are insufficient to make a living otherwise.

Bottom line: the Amazon rain forest is one of the few remaining resource-rich regions on earth that has yet to be completely looted– that could still be used for more good than evil.

Read the book to learn about: the annual Davos-like conference called COP where the (mostly greedy, power-hungry) attendees pretend to wring their hands over the destruction of the Amazon rain forest; the entrepreneurs who do agroforestry; the dreamers who want to turn their land into environmentally friendly utopias; and the one small cause for optimism that can improve the situation (hint: high-technology satellite images can measure deforestation).