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hermannsthumb · 3 years

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I know you don't usually write PRU stuff, but if you ever feel inclined, here's a ficlet idea! so: Newt is trying to fight off the Precursors by constantly reminding himself that He Is Human. but whenever newt thinks about what makes him Feel Human, the answer is always hermann. so newt starts conjuring up vivid mental images of hermann (doing mundane, hermann-y things) to ward off the Precursors. bonus point if, like, newt fondly remembering smth innocuous (like the scent of Hermann's chalk dust?) is enough to actually sever the alien mind control.

Anonymous asked: Maria!!! Would you ever write an angsty post uprising prompt? Or even a pre uprising? Anything with Newt fucking around with Kaiju and being sad i am HERE FOR 👏

in honor of the sequel’s 3 year anniversary, let’s try something a little different 👀 THIS ONE GOT AWAY FROM ME RE: LENGTH....I'll leave it up to interpretation whether or not the bonus is wholly fulfilled.... also on proofing this I realized it might need content warnings? so vague refs to disordered eating and alcohol drinking (ie, newt’s body is inhabited by aliens who forget how human stuff works)

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Honestly, Newt’s life has been kind of a shitshow lately. He’s too, like, high strung. Too many responsibilities. Not enough hours in the day to get that shit done. He’s even higher strung than he was during the war, which is nuts, because certain doom was lurking around every corner. Maybe that’s why it’s not that nuts, though. The war was chaotic—and Newt’s fueled (or, used to be fueled?) by chaos. The kaiju were unpredictable. The kaiju didn’t run on a 9-5 schedule. The kaiju didn’t expect Newt to have three new jaeger prototypes on their desk by noon on a fucking Saturday, which is usually the day Newt spends two hours in his expensive bath tub and drinks a nice bottle of wine, and definitely not a day he wants to spend giving himself a stress migraine and shouting at underlings to make themselves useful. On top of that, his usual cafe got his coffee order wrong—when Newt had to run in to get it, himself, on a Saturday morning—and it only had half the espresso shots he really needs for the day. No wonder he’s going grey at forty. Fucking nightmare. Stable employment is exactly the kind of chaos that’s bad for Newt—give him the kaiju any day, thanks.

“Dr. Geiszler?”

Newt pushes his sunglasses up, and scowls at whichever one of his employees has dared to interrupt his catnap. The fluorescent overheads are brutal on his poor eyes right now. The lab needs more natural lighting. Maybe if he complains, they’ll knock out some walls in put in a few more windows. “Did you find any Aspirin?” he says.

Wordlessly, Newt’s assistant passes him a bottle. Newt pops the cap off and takes at least four. The coffee he washes it down with is cold. “How are the last simulations coming along?” he says, flicking his sunglasses back down. He seems to have so many migraines these days. It’s the contact lenses, he thinks—making the switch over from frames so late in the game. Screwing with his perceptions. Newt went thirty years with frames, after all. “We only have two hours before—”

“We’re almost done,” his assistant cuts in. “We’re working as fast as we can, Dr. Geiszler.”

“But are we gonna make the deadline?” Newt says.

She fidgets, and moves her clipboard to her other arm. “Well—we’ve had some—issues.”

Newt stands up with a long sigh. Double overtime, probably. Sunday lost to this shit too. That new bottle of wine waiting for him on his kitchen counter bought for nothing. “Gotta do everything myself, huh? Unbelievable.”

He follows his assistant over to the main lab down the hall, where his team of j-techs are hurrying around. Hardly anyone in proper lab attire—no labcoats—someone in sweatpants—Newt wasn’t the only one who had his Saturday ruined, probably. No one else is going grey, though. “What’s this shit?” he says, stopping in his tracks with one foot through the doorway. The high-tech holo-smartboards have been pushed aside, and instead, someone’s wheeled in a huge…chalkboard.

“Technical issues,” his assistant says. “The other floors are having the same problem—something in the new interface update that downloaded last night, we think. They’re all out of commission. Technology is working on it, but for now, we had to pull that out of deep storage.”

Two of his scientists are scrawling across the board quickly—one with white chalk, the other with pink. They’re debating something in hushed tones. Newt hasn’t seen a chalkboard in years. It doesn’t fit with Shao Industry’s whole chic, sleek, futuristic aesthetic. So—bulky. And messy. “Of course it would happen today of all days,” Newt sighs. The sight of it makes him feel odd, and he can’t seem to drag himself any further into the lab and any closer towards it.

His assistant says something. Newt doesn’t hear—he’s listening, instead, to the squeaking of chalk across the blackboard. So noisy and obnoxious. It reminds him of years and years ago, of working in a grimy little basement, of…

“—look it over. Dr. Geiszler?”

“Hm?” Newt says. It was like a layer of fog had begun to lift from his thoughts, but the interruption sends it rolling right back in.

“I said we’re ready for you to look it over. Only if you want too, of course,” she adds, nervously.

“Uh-huh,” Newt says.

Newt’s never had anyone fear him before, not like his employees seem to fear him—he’s not sure he likes it. His scientists shut up the second he looms over (well—under, Newt’s never loomed over anyone in his life) their shoulders to inspect their work so far. The squeaking stops. One of them lowers their piece of chalk. “Wait,” Newt says, too-loudly, surprising them and himself. They both look at him with the same nervousness as his assistant, like he’s about to start shouting or something. “Keep doing that.”

“Keep…?”

“Writing,” Newt says. “On the chalkboard.”

The scientist frowns at him. “Um, okay,” she says. “What am I supposed to write?”

“Anything,” Newt says. “Seriously. Anything.”

She hesitates.

“Anything,” Newt repeats.

She picks up the white chalk, and writes out her name, then doodles a few random pictures—a DNA helix, a flower, a cat face, a star. Newt shuts his eyes, and breathes in deeply. That smell. He snags the forgotten piece of pink chalk from the ledge. “Can I have this?” he says. He doesn’t wait for them to respond—though they both nod yes frantically, and bewilderedly—before writing out his own name on the board. Dr. Geiszler. It looks wrong, so he writes Newt beneath it. He shuts his eyes, and writes Newt again. Why does he feel like he’s done this sort of thing before? This thing is ancient—before his time at Shao—he wouldn’t have used it before they carted off to the basement. Newt, Newt, Newt Was Here,he writes, Newt +, and then he stops.

He opens his eyes. “Who’s Hermann?” his assistant says.

Newt + Hermann. Newt didn’t realize he wrote it. “Someone I knew,” he says, faintly. “Years ago. He was my—” He swallows. He feels strange. “My colleague?”

Strange. Dizzy. The Aspirin isn’t working. Definitely the contact lenses. He could afford laser eye surgery now, if he wanted, maybe he should look into it. He grips the ledge of the chalkboard, swaying, and grits his teeth; his two scientists back away from him slowly, no doubt worried he’s about to hurl all over their shoes. He might, to be honest. Newt + Hermann. Hermann was his colleague. Hermann was his— “Are you feeling okay, Dr. Geiszler?” his assistant asks. “You look…”

“Tell Shao I’m taking the rest of the day off,” Newt says.

“What?”

“You guys got this shit handled without me,” Newt says. He pockets the chalk. “I’m not—I’m not feeling myself. I think I need to go home and lie down. Seriously, you’ve got it under control—all these numbers look, uh, good, I trust you. If you guys don’t get it finished you can just tell Shao it’s my fault, okay?”

She gapes at him. “Uh,” she says. “Okay?”

Newt doesn’t go home. He goes to the nearest shop he can find instead, and makes a beeline for the art supplies aisle. Only a few boxes of chalk in stock. Four multicolored, two all-white, one yellow. He drops them all into his basket but the yellow, which he rips opens and immediately smells. Newt + Hermann. Hermann always smelled like chalk dust—he always had a fine layer of it on his clothing, patches of it on his blazer, his sweatervest, even on his undershirt. Newt used to tease him for that. He closes his eyes, and breathes in again. Funny—all those baths, all those bottles of wine, and this stupid little box of chalk is what’s finally making him feel calm for once. Quieting down his brain. He didn’t realize how loud it’d gotten in there. When Hermann would kiss Newt, he would sometimes stain Newt’s clothing with chalk, too, and Newt would pretend to be annoyed, but he never really was.

Someone is speaking to him. An employee. They’re staring at him, a cautious distance away, and Newt’s not sure what they’re saying.

His vision’s gone blurry—he didn’t realize he’d started crying, either. He wipes his eyes on the cuff of his blazer and sniffles. “Sorry,” he says. The box of yellow chalk is wet. “Um. Do you have any more of these in the back?”

He takes the bus home for the first time in years, one hand stuffed in his little brown shopping bag the whole time, wrapped around a box of chalk. When he gets back to his apartment (his big, lonely, apartment), he pulls out the only food in his fridge—some leftovers from a Shao Industries event three nights ago—and settles down on his big, lonely couch. He can’t stop thinking about Hermann. Five or so years, maybe more, not thinking about Hermann, and now suddenly—it’s like the floodgates have opened. He thinks about Hermann’s haircut. (Bad.) He thinks about Hermann’s smile. (Silly, and sweet.) He thinks about Hermann’s dumb accent, and the clack of Hermann’s cane on the floor, and Hermann’s chalk squeaking over his chalkboard, and how it felt when Hermann would wrap him in his arms and kiss him and whisper things to him. Hermann’s sweaters always smelled like mothballs and stale cigarette smoke. Terrible combination.

Newt’s stomach growls. He’s finished the small bit of leftovers without realizing, and is apparently still hungry. He would kill for some sushi takeout right now. Or pizza, God. Yeah, it’d be screwing with his new diet and fitness plan—he casts a guilty glance over at his brand new exercise bike, which is gathering dust in the corner by his TV—but he’s tired of doing stupid kale and juice cleanses or whatever, just to please—well. He’s only human.

He is?

He walks up the stairs to his bathroom, and stares at himself in the mirror. Stupid vest. Stupid tie. Neat hair, clean-shaven cheeks, contact lenses. Newt’s only human. “I’m human,” he tells his reflection. Is he human? He felt human standing by that old chalkboard back in the lab, and holding that box of yellow chalk in the aisle of that little shop. He felt human when he was remembering things. Because of—Newt blinks at himself. Because of whom?

“Hermann,” he says, and smiles at the way the name makes him feel. He should text him, maybe.

-------------

“I must say,” Hermann says, “I was quite surprised when I received your dinner invitation. You’ve done a rather fine job of ignoring my calls as of late. I’d thought— Ah, thank you,” he adds, as Newt holds the door open for him. He steps into Newt’s apartment and cranes his neck around, squinting curiously, and then shoves a bottle of red wine at Newt’s chest. Hermann is much more personable than Newt remembers—what little Newt remembers—and he wonders if it’s age or something else. “I’ve been holding onto this one for a while. It’s the one you gave me as a part of a gift for my thirty-seventh birthday—you remember? Oh, but isn’t it so terrifically, er, modern in here.”

“Is it?” Newt says. He’s never given much thought to his apartment before, but he stares around at it now in mild interest. It is very chic, isn’t it? Monochrome. Impersonal. Not something Newt would’ve picked for himself. “Yeah, I had some interior decorators come in and do it for me.”

Hermann arches an eyebrow. “How…”

“Modern,” Newt offers. He puts the bottle of wine on his marble kitchen island. “Thanks for this, by the way, but I’ve actually been trying to cut back on the—” He bites back drinking. No need to alarm Hermann. “—Calories, so if it’s cool with you I’d rather not open it. I’m doing a, um, a new fitness program.”

“Ah,” Hermann says. “I suppose that explains that, then, doesn’t it?” He points at the dusty exercise bike. Newt watches his gaze move from that, to the barren leather couch, to the short staircase which leads to Newt’s shut bedroom door. Newt can practically see the gears working in his head. “Will—ah, what was their name, that little flight of fancy of yours—a dalliance, one might say—will they be, ah, joining the two of us?” He looks at Newt out of the corner of his eye. “Alice, was it?”

“Who?” Newt says, blankly.

Hermann breaks out in a broad grin, which he quickly tries, very badly, to turn into a sympathetic frown. He pats Newt’s arm. “There’s the spirit, then, Newton! All in the past, I presume? Hardly any use in dwelling on a broken heart. Then again—it’s not as if you were together long enough to warrant those sorts of dramatics, were you?” he says, cheerily. “What I mean is—certainly it wasn’t as if you had any sort of deep or emotional connection with—?—oh, I’ve forgotten the name again.”

“Uh,” Newt says. He’s not really sure who Hermann’s talking about, but just based on that fact alone, he would assume Hermann is right. “I guess not?”

“Precisely as I expected,” Hermann says, with a satisfied nod. “Rotten grounds for a relati—for a fling. You deserve far better, Newton.” Hermann touches Newt’s arm again, and this time, he doesn’t move his hand. It makes Newt’s skin prickle pleasantly. “You look well these days, though I admit it’s a bit of a shock to see you without your glasses,” Hermann continues, flicking his eyes up and down Newt twice. He lingers on Newt’s left hand, over the bare spot where—until this morning, when he suddenly realized how stupid it looked and yanked it off—he was wearing that Elvis ring. “Ending things must be treating you kindly. I don’t suppose I could dash to your loo?”

“Loo?” Newt says. “Oh, right. Yeah, it’s that door there, right off the living room.” He drops down onto the leather couch. “Knock yourself out. I’ll be right here.”

Hermann disappears into Newt’s bathroom, and comes back out three minutes later with combed hair, a straightened collar, and the vague smell of cologne. He’s tucking a small bottle into his top pocket. “I found a box of hair dye in your medicine cabinet,” he declares, smugly. “I knew there was no bloody way that was natural. Though I’m not surprised it fooled Alice.” He rests his cane against the glass coffee table and sits down next to Newt. Right next to Newt. The whole sofa to pick from, and he’d rather their thighs touch. Newt doesn’t mind—actually, the contact is strangely grounding, like Hermann’s hand on his arm had been earlier. He’s here, in his living room, with Hermann, his friend Hermann, his colleague Hermann, his—well, question mark—Hermann.

“Hermann, can I ask you something?” he says. “Something important?”

“By all means,” Hermann says, leaning in and fluttering his eyelashes. Even over the cologne, Newt can still make out that mothball-chalk-smoke smell.

“Do you take your coffee with sugar?” he says.

Hermann laughs. “Do I—what?”

Newt repeats the question. The smile slips off Hermann’s face, and he draws away, furrowing his eyebrows. “Well,” he says, “yes, usually, only I’m not sure what—”

“Sugar, and some milk,” Newt says. “It was the same with your tea. And you had a mug that you would use—you wouldn’t use any other. It was blue, and it said—” He exhales through his nose. “It said TU Berlin. That’s where you got your PhD.”

After Newt sent Hermann a text about dinner last night, he sat down with a pen and pad of paper and made a list of everything he could remember about Hermann. He started with what Hermann looks like, and who Hermann is, and then moved into the harder stuff like what Hermann likes and the sort of things Hermann used to do. He stayed up all night doing it, until his hand cramped and his head hurt even more than it had that morning, and then recited it over and over to himself in a whisper as he fell asleep. Hermann has brown eyes. Hermann likes blackberry jam on his toast. Hermann wears little glasses on a chain. Hermann uses a cane with a tiny little nick in the brass of the handle. The list is in his pocket now; it makes Newt feel calm, and even calmer when he reaches into his pocket and touches it. He exhales again, hard, and then inhales. “We were together,” he says. “When we closed the Breach, you told me you loved me.”

“I did,” Hermann says, quietly.

“I said it back,” Newt says.

Hermann nods.

Slowly, Newt reaches out and puts his hand over Hermann’s. Hermann makes a strange noise in the back of his throat—like a sigh, or maybe a groan. His pulse twitches erratically under Newt’s fingertips. “I bought chalk,” Newt says.

“You—” Hermann echoes, his voice choked. “You bought chalk?”

“It reminded me of you,” Newt says.

He’s not surprised when Hermann kisses him, but he is surprised at his knee-jerk reaction: to pull away, or push Hermann away, and to order him to get out of his apartment. He’s surprised, because those aren’t his thoughts. He doesn’t want Hermann to leave—he wants Hermann to stay longer, and kiss him more, and help him remember more. “Oh, Newton,” Hermann says. “Newton, Newton—” He moves his mouth to Newt’s neck, kissing, breathing, and whispering his name, and Newt shuts his eyes and forces himself to remember his list.

“Tell me things about you,” Newt begs. “I want to remember you.”

Hermann’s laughter, hesitant and confused, comes out in a puff of hot air against his skin. “Remember me?” he says. “I’m not sure— Are we not a bit—?”

“Hermann,” Newt says.

He grips the back of Hermann’s sweater, digging his nails in Hermann’s skin through the layers of fabric. Hermann must hear the urgency in his voice, because he shakes his head with another laugh, kisses Newt’s jaw, and says, “Well, alright. What am I even meant to tell you?”

“Your favorite color,” Newt says. Hermann kisses his chin. “Your favorite song. No, wait—” He nudges Hermann away from him, just enough so that Hermann can see him smile. “Tell me what you like about me.”

“Feeling rather egotistical tonight, aren’t we?” Hermann teases. He reaches out and brushes his fingers through the side of Newt’s hair. One of the spots Newt dyed—it was too grey. He catches Hermann’s hand by the wrist and pulls it away gently, but only to press himself up against Hermann’s chest instead. He can feel Hermann’s heartbeat. “I like—hm,” Hermann says. “I like your stubbornness. I like your passion. I like…”

His voice vibrates in his throat—Newt can feel that, too. He listens.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #if Alice was a real person her picture would be on Hermann's dartboard #it probably is anyway #Anonymous

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rekkingcrew · 6 years

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Devaronian Headcanons Actual

So, right, actual devaronian headcanons, ranging from charming to full on dystopic.

Biological:

Devaronians have two livers and a resistance to all sorts of poisons- that’s just WASTEFUL if the planet isn’t throwing poison at you all the fucking time. Devaron is a toxic death trap, where the life forms have been engaged for millions of years in a toxin-based arms race. And devaronians are the winners.

Silver’s got anti-bacterial properties in laboratory situations. I think Devaronians are more disease resistant than a lot of other species.

Devaronians are listed as carnivorous. They seem like they’re resistant to most everything, so I’m sure they could choke down anything they needed to, but probably derive negligible nutrition from most plant matter. You might eat it for taste or digestion or something, but if it’s all you’ve got, you’re gonna starve.

Which I think means devaronian society probably stayed mobile and small in larger percentages than human society for a long time (not trying to minimize, like, human migratory and hunter gatherer populations, but by analogy if you look at meat as a percentage of diet of any given population group before, like, modern America, more meat equals more mobile), and that the devaronian analogue of the Neolithic revolution was a sort of proto-chemistry that opened up new techniques for long-term meat preservation, with permanent settlements springing up around places where you could get things like salt or caustic alkaline chemicals- though you’d still need people to go ranging.

Because devaronians CAN eat most any awful toxic thing, and because there’d be such a necessity to keep meat from rotting if you wanted to support a fixed population, a lot of traditional devaronian foods tend toward jerkying, pickling, and like, curing with lye. Lots of stuff that looks like lutefisk and hakarl, or some sort of meat kimchi. Lots of bitter, umami, sour, salty. Punctuations of insanely hot peppers. I think devaronians generally consider sweet an oddity and acquired taste.

While this preservation isn’t a necessity for modern devaronians, I do think they still season things with stuff that’s poisonous to other species, and if your host isn’t paying attention, they might forget to take their arsenic shaker off the table. Eat at your own risk. Because of this and the crazy flora and fauna, outside of the big cities, there aren’t a lot of aliens who stay on planet.

Devaronian babies are all white and fuzzy until they’re about 5-7, when they blow their coats and start being sexually dimorphic. No textual reason. I just like this.

Space-faring, better farming science, and the importation of some alien plants, have allowed post-hyperdrive devaronians a more stable and balanced diet with a wider range of stuff from which they can extract digestible protein.

Social:

Because of a relative inability to digest plant matter, devaronian society has always been very susceptible to famine. Different societies developed different strategies for dealing with this (because universal planetary culture is every bit as silly as single biomes), but one strain that gained a lot of dominance was an intense matrilinear/matrilocal strategy where men old enough to make their own way were “encouraged” to leave. There’s a rich intellectual history of justifying this behavior, from the cold calculus that it just takes fewer men than anyone else to maintain population levels, to pontification on how men are just naturally inclined toward wandering, to people making the argument that a low ratio of men to women makes for a happier and more harmonious society. There’s also a rich intellectual history of saying this is monstrous. No society always agrees with itself, and different voices have had more or less dominance at different times throughout devaronian history.

Devaron’s population is sometimes as much as 75% female.

This is the planet of nannies. Seriously. With loads of men gone and women in charge of most of domestic business and governance, childcare is a major industry. Job sharing is super common to provide time off with young children. Partnership and group ownership of businesses by several women is common.

In fact, I’m going to say there’s a mobile childcare corps, replacing a number of more traditional structures as increasingly technological devaronian society centralized; one that has some fun analogies to western conceptions of the military, ie. it’s seen by a lot of people as an important rite of passage for young people, a sign of a strong moral character, and full of exactly the sort of people who make good leaders. Compassionate. Patient. Capable of managing others. It’s hard to get elected office in some places without a service record. Men are, of course, discouraged, due to their natural tendencies. When devaron’s history takes its more authoritarian swings, the MCC is often a very visible propaganda arm, with more obvious uniforms and a chokehold on education and indoctrination. During those times, you will, of course, be expected to thank corps members for their service. Society would not run without them.

In the best of times, they run loads of public crèches and help out immensely in private homes as well. Devaronians of all walks of life often have fond memories of their MCC workers, the way you would with a favorite aunt. Or sometimes they commiserate over stories of their strict MCC workers, like you would with a least favorite aunt. Swings and roundabouts.

The most dangerous term generally applied to men is “expendable.” The second is probably “reckless.” There’s a widespread prejudice that men, as wanderers, lack the long-term vision and planning capacity necessary to manage things (the same way human idiots are prone to saying things like they don’t think gay men have a stake in the future because they don’t have children, both the premise and its conclusion are suspect.) Men who stay on devaron are often funneled into dangerous work, whether that’s the military, or construction/demolition, or less than safe factory work. Overseers and “logistics officers” will tend to be female. In more conservative media, stories about industrial accidents will often be spun as men not listening to their more level-headed female supervisor.

Most of the sources I found mentioned men sending money home to devaron. Headcanon: this is a semi-ritualized exchange with it’s own fun alien name (but for now I’ll just call it the Tithe, because I’m bad with alien names), it’s one of the foremost ways men can get social prestige, and the devaronian economy really relies on it. And it makes Devaron RICH. (American history side track: Tulsa’s “black wallstreet” was a really good example of outside money flowing into a relatively closed system).

Devaron, with early space faring, has had a few interstellar “Age of Sail” periods, where a lot of the Tithe coming in for prominent families straight up came from piracy, or “Devaronian Privateers”. Harsh on crime at home, and nominally against piracy abroad, there have been times Devaron has really profited by it. There’s an ugly vein of thought along the lines of “it doesn’t matter if it happens to aliens.” Obviously opinions differ. The dashing star pirate remains a popular romantic archetype in devaronian culture (though he often comes to a tragic end). The devaronian pirate is an archetype in a number of other species’ cultures as well, but notably less romantic.

One of the major ways the Empire controls Devaron is controlling the flow of Tithe, requiring all transfers go through imperial channels and making it much harder to send money back to anyone suspected of dissent.

A lot of men remaining on devaron are locked in a vicious cycle of having limited potential to advance because they’re traditionally seen as less invested in the future; and in turn being less invested in the future because they’re locked out of moving forward into it. Leaving all together is often an enticing proposition. This is often pointed to as evidence of both lack of ambition and a natural tendency toward wandering.

Exploration and travel for men are often deeply romanticized- a real source of meaning in their lives and a chance for something better. There is loads of poetry, literature, music, and other popular culture about it. This is encouraged. A number of female devaronian writers and thinkers have expressed the same. These are often considered scandalous and bad influences.

Obviously there have been, across the vast expanse of history, loads of counter cultures, different fashions, and changing ideas. But these’ll be the big ones, and what people talk about when they say “traditional” devaronian culture.

Anyway, that’s my attempt to reconcile canon! Hope some of it is useful!

#devaronian headcanon

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greatvocalmajority · 5 years

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Great Vocal Majority Podcast Volume 72: Obama vs Trump

PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND TRUMP: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

Let's start with Barack Obama. To begin with, he's not really an American. I don't mean to say he was born in Kenya. I don't believe that. I am referring to his life experiences. They are uniquely NON AMERICAN. He's got almost nothing in common with Americans of any stripe.

He's biracial, identifies as black, but his life growing up has almost nothing in common with blacks Americans outside of his skin tone. Obama grew up as a "red diaper baby." That is, his parents were either communists or radical socialists. He lived in Hawaii and Indonesia for much of his formative years and when he lived in the continental United States, from age 11 to 18, he was mentored by Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a man so dangerous, the FBI had him on a roundup list of Soviet sympathizing communist subversives.

By contrast, Donald Trump grew up in an upper middle class Queens home of a New York real estate developer. From all accounts, Trump had a more or less typical childhood: brash, a bit rebellious, enough for his parents to place him in a military academy. Unlike Obama, Trump was not surrounded by anti-American radicals into adulthood.

Ever since he was a public figure, Trump has always been an outspoken critic of the failures of government to live up to it most basic obligations. Prior to becoming President, Obama was also critical of government, but for other reasons. Obama believed government failed to assume enough obligations and thus spoke out strongly for a more activist government. In other words, Trump believed the government wasn't adequately fulfilling its obligations it has already assumed, whereas Obama wanted government to assume new obligations it has not yet taken.

When assessing their capacity for sympathy or empathy, Obama was often far more inclined to display it for people who aren't Americans. He regularly blamed past and current policies of the United States for many of the world's problems. On those occasions when he demonstrated empathy for Americans, it often took on a divisive tone, as in "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon", or "if you have a business, you didn't build that." Trump was not apologetic to foreign audiences for past or current policies. Rather, if he was apologetic at all, it was to Americans for the failure of political leadership that created those policies. Policies, which often, as in the case of trade agreements, took its toll on working and middle class employment and incomes. When speaking to foreign audiences, rather than apologize for American policy, Trump was bold. He acted as an advocate for America, reminding our allies in no uncertain terms what America was doing for them and whether those allies were living up to their obligations to us. This was such a radical departure from Obama and previous Presidents, it had to be jarring to other national leaders.

The media elites are endlessly fascinated by both men in opposite ways. Obama's treatment was so mild, that the one news outlet which covered his Presidency with a note of skepticism, Fox News, was painted by the Obama Administration as "agenda driven" and "anti-Obama." But it's hard to argue that the media didn't have a virtual love affair with Obama and his Presidency. Both Obama's appeared regularly on entertainment programs and had one softball interview after another. Barack Obama was extremely sensitive to media criticism on those rare occasions he got it. Despite boasting of having the most "open and transparent administration in history", Obama hid more from the media than any President since the Founding. More FOIA requests were denied or delayed under Obama. More whistle blowers, leakers and journalists were surveiled or jailed under Obama. Maybe Obama was treated by the media with great deference, but he didn't return the favor. Still, in aggregate, the media adored him.

The contrast with the media treatment of Donald Trump is painful. It is 180 degrees opposite of Obama's. Certainly Trump's behavior in office can fairly account for some of the difference. Trump is given to exaggeration, embellishment, misstatements and untruthful comments in the same way as is just about every other politician. For his entire public life, however, Trump has been known to speak in superlatives much in the manner of a pitch man. This is where the news media began to show its open disdain for Trump.

When Trump was elected, the economy responded positively almost immediately. Obama and Clinton supporting economists such as Paul Krugman and Steven Rattner had predicted the economy would "crash and NEVER recover." The news media immediately leaped to credit Obama for the economic turnaround, despite failing to point out any policy accounting for it. What should have been obvious to any impartial observer was the country had just elected the most vociferously pro-business President in its history. Obama and his presumed successor, Clinton could never be characterized as pro-business. That anticipated change in direction is what accounts for the immediate turnaround in both markets and economic indicators.

The problem was, the news media really took it on the chin with the Trump victory and were staggered by it. They lost face and continue to lose it because the videos of them dismissing Donald Trump as a potential President will live on forever. Since his election, the same media outlets who thought Trump's candidacy was a joke, are now treating his presidency as if it were a crime. Their treatment of Trump is driven as much by an attempt to recover a loss of reputation, as much as it is partisan politics. For, if the situation were reversed and Trump were the heavy favorite and Hillary Clinton won in a surprise, it's hard to imagine the media reacting to the win quite the way they have with Trump.

Some in the Washington, D.C. media elites were perpetually perplexed and bewildered by Obama's behavior in office, judging him by a standard of governing set by his predecessors, which Obama clearly rejected. Obama sensed that a vast part of the media was willing to give him broad latitude. This enabled him to exceed his constitutional guardrails without consequence in the Congress and outside of Fox News, scarcely a whisper of protest. Obama overrode his authority with War Powers, bombing more countries than any President since the second world war. He rewrote black letter law on no less than 36 occasions with Obamacare. He exceeded his authority with the DACA EO and on many other occasions. All while doing this, especially during his first term, the media kept waiting for Obama to "track to the middle." He never did because he wasn't a centrist any more than Joe Stalin was a centrist compared to Leon Trotsky. Obama came to office promising change and he did it by growing government, making it more activist, more centralized, far more powerful over the lives of average Americans than ever before.

Donald Trump also confounds the Washington elites, but in a different way. Obama was there to drive change by empowering the central planners in Washington. Trump was elected to do precisely the opposite: disrupt their power. From the very start, Trump sought to pull back the reins on the centralized Washington power structure. He sought to accomplish this by eliminating regulations. Regulations are how the permanent government, ie., the federal bureaucracies exert their control over our way of life. This is not to say that all regulations are bad or that we should live in a regulation free environment. To Trump's way of thinking, regulations are a last resort, not the first option. Obama and the central planners suffer from a fatal conceit: that regulations are ALWAYS needed and it's always better to err on the side of having more than less.

The Obama approach to regulatory authority has led to bureaucratic abuses resulting in nearly two dozen unanimous Supreme Court decisions against the Obama Administration, striking down such abuses.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump may be diametrical opposites on the political spectrum. Their treatment by the media may be as different as black from white. But they are similar in ways, as well. Both are change agents, but for very different visions of America.

The Obama vision for America, is one of a very left socialist agenda. His idea of America would demand less individual liberty. Obama's view is that of radical egalitarianism where outcomes are determined by group identity. As a leftist, Obama sees Americans as a collection of tribes: in race: the white tribe, the black tribe, the asian tribe, the latino tribe, the native american tribe and on and on. This tribal view exists in all areas of life: economics, religion, and sexual orientation. Obama sees history as having created a preexisting condition advantaging a minority over a majority, necessitating government prescriptions to correct. The fact these prescriptions have been tried elsewhere and have failed miserably doesn't dissuade the committed leftist at all. That's Obama.

The Trump vision for America is quite different. Trump rejects the division of Americans along tribal lines. He believes that most of the problems in the country today have been caused by policies that don't accomplish what they were ostensibly set out to do. In other words, government has made itself the problem. In Trump's view, the best thing government can do is to first get out of the way of the People. This is manifested through reducing taxes and regulations, renegotiating trade agreements, holding allies and foes accountable and securing the border. Trump seems to believe in America to a greater degree than Obama, who has been accused of believing in a managed decline of the United States. Trump believes if America leveraged all of our natural resources in the right way, the United States would remain the world's leading economy, technological and military power well into the forseeable future and beyond. There does seem to be much evidence proving him to be correct.

What is the moral of the story here? Well, it's simple. Donald Trump REALLY DOES believe in America. He sees this country as the greatest and most unique country in all of human history. He is an American exceptionalist.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, believes more in his ideology than he does in America. He doesn't hate America, but he doesn't love it either. He sees us as having a largely unearned reputation, with power, wealth and influence greater than we ought to have. Obama is a GLOBALIST.

So, that is really what all this Trump bashing is all about. Much of the DC establishment is about the international Left pushing for a GLOBALIST agenda, that will look a great deal like the USSR or Communist China to the average person, should it ever happen.

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