"Hamilton"- neoliberal nerdcore musical

[Elvis]

Are you, too, leery of the wave of breathless Hamiltonmania?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/07/ ... ur-country


You Should Be Terrified That People Who Like “Hamilton” Run Our Country

The American elite can’t get enough of a musical that flatters their political sensibilities and avoids discomforting truths.

Alex Nichols
filed 29 July 2016

In 2012, Captain Dan and his Scurvy Crew, a four-man hip-hop ensemble trying to cement “pirate rap” as a tenable subgenre, appeared on America’s Got Talent. The quartet had clearly put some thought, or at least effort, into the act; their pirate costumes might even have passed historical muster were it not for the leftmost crewmember’s Ray-Bans and Dan’s meticulously groomed chinstrap beard.

The routine itself went precisely in the direction one might have expected:

Captain Dan: When I say yo, you say ho. Yo!
Scurvy Crew: HO!
Captain Dan: YO!
Scurvy Crew: HO!

The group managed to rattle off two-and-a-half stilted lines before the judges began sounding their buzzers. Howard Stern was the last to give them the red “X,” preferring to let the audience’s boos come to a crescendo before he cut the Scurvy Crew off. Stern seemed to take great pleasure in calling the group “stupid,” “moronic,” “idiotic,” and “pathetic” on a national stage (Captain Dan grimaced through his humiliating dressing-down while his bandmates laughed it off, exposing a gap in emotional investment in the project between captain and crew, one that likely led to some intra-group tension during the post-show commiseration drinks).

Howie Mandel: They have restaurants like this—like Medieval Times—where you go and you get a pirates thing and you get a chicken dinner. We didn’t get a chicken dinner with this.

In 2012, everyone (save for Captain Dan himself, along with people whose tastes range from “music from video games” to “music about video games”) was in agreement that performing high-school-history-project rap in Colonial Williamsburg garb was culturally unconscionable. Right?

Wrong. The world in which we live now includes Hamilton, a wildly successful “hip-hop musical” about the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America.

Now, perhaps the America’s Got Talent audience isn’t an accurate sample of the American population as a whole. Perhaps they actually thought “when I say yo, you say ho” was clever , but were directed to boo by an off-screen neon sign. Or perhaps something happened in the past four years that made everyone really stupid.

But what if the American public’s taste hasn’t devolved? What if Hamilton’s success is the result of something else altogether?

Brian Eno once said that the Velvet Underground’s debut album only sold a few thousand copies, but everyone who bought it started a band. The same principle likely applies to Hamilton: only a few thousand people could afford to see it, but everyone who did happened to work for a prominent New York/D.C. publication.

The media gushing over Hamilton has been downright torrential. “I am loath to tell people to mortgage their houses and lease their children to acquire tickets to a hit Broadway show,” wrote Ben Brantley of the New York Times. “But Hamilton… might just about be worth it.” The hyperbolic headlines poured forth unceasingly: “Is Hamilton the Musical the Most Addicting Album Ever?” “Hamilton is the most important musical of our time.” “Hamilton Haters Are Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.” The media then got high on their own supply, diagnosing all of America with a harrowing ailment called “Hamilton mania.” The work was “astonishing,” “sublime,” the “cultural event of our time.” Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune said the musical was “even better than the hype.” Given the tenor of the hype, one can only imagine the pure, overpowering ecstasy that must comprise the Hamilton-viewing experience. The musical even somehow won a Pulitzer Prize this year, alongside Nicholas Kristof and that book by Ta-Nehisi Coates you bought but never read.

One of the publications to enter swooning raptures over Hamilton was BuzzFeed, which called it the smash musical “that everyone you know has been quoting for months.” (Literally nobody has ever quoted Hamilton in my presence.) BuzzFeed’s workplace obsession with the musical led to the birthing of the phrase “BuzzFeed Hamilton Slack.” That three-word monstrosity, incomprehensible to anyone outside the narrowest circle of listicle-churning media elites, describes a room on the corporate messaging platform “Slack” used exclusively by BuzzFeed employees to discuss Hamilton. J.R.R. Tolkien said that “cellar door” was the most beautiful phonetic phrase the English language could produce. “BuzzFeed Hamilton Slack,” by contrast, may be the most repellent arrangement of words in any tongue.

Those of us unfortunate enough not to work media jobs can never be privy to what goes on in a “BuzzFeed Hamilton Slack.” But the Twitter emissions of the Slack’s denizens suggest a swamp into which no man should tread. A tellingly ominous and thoroughly representative Tweet:

“When the Buzzfeed #Hamilton slack room has a heated debate about which Hogwarts houses the characters belong to” —@Arielle07

“Nerdcore” music (Wikipedia: “a genre of hip hop music characterized by themes and subject matter considered to be of general interest to nerds”) has always had trouble getting off the ground. The “first lady of nerdcore,” rapper MC Router (responsible for the song “Trekkie Pride”), never achieved the critical success for which she had seemed destined, instead ending up on the Dr. Phil show after an acrimonious dispute with her family over her unexpected conversion to Islam. Similarly, the YouTube series “Epic Rap Battles of History,” however numerous its subscribers may have been, has consistently been unjustly robbed of the Pulitzer. Now, finally, nerd rap has apparently found in Hamilton its own Sgt. Pepper, a lofty, expansive work that wins the hearts and minds of previously skeptical elite critics.

One should have no doubt that “expensively-staged nerdcore” is a perfectly accurate, even generous description of Hamilton. Doubters need only examine a brief lyrical snippet. Consider this, from “The Election of 1800”:

Madison: It’s a tie! …
Jefferson: It’s up to the delegates!…
Jefferson/Madison: It’s up to Hamilton!
Hamilton: Yo.
The people are asking to hear my voice ..
For the country is facing a difficult choice.
And if you were to ask me who I’d promote …
Jefferson has my vote.

Perhaps marginally less embarrassing than “when I say yo, you say ho.” But only ever so marginally.

One could question the fairness of appraising a musical before putting one’s self through its full three-hour theatrical experience. But if nobody could criticize Hamilton without having seen it, then nobody could criticize Hamilton. One of the strangest aspects of the whole “Hamiltonmania” public relations spectacle is that hardly anyone in the country has actually attended the musical to begin with. The show is exclusive to Broadway and has spent most of its run completely sold out, seemingly playing to an audience comprised entirely of people who write breathless BuzzFeed headlines. (Fortunately, when you can get off the waitlist it only costs $1,200 a ticket—so long as you can stand bad seats.) Hamilton is the “nationwide sensation” that only .001% of the nation has even witnessed.

There’s something revealing in the disjunction between Hamilton’s popularity in the world of online media and Hamilton’s popularity in the world of actual human persons. After all, here we have a cultural product whose appeal essentially consists of a broad coalition of the worst people in America: New York Times writers, 15-year-olds who aspire to answer the phone in Chuck Schumer’s office, people who want to get into steampunk but have a copper sensitivity, and “wonks.” Yet because a large fraction of these people are elite taste-makers, Hamilton becomes a topic of disproportionate interest, discussed at unendurable length in The New Yorker and Slate and The New York Times Magazine, yet totally inaccessible to anyone besides the writers and members of their close social networks. When The New Yorker writes about a book that nobody in America wants to read, at least they could theoretically go out and purchase it. But Hamilton theatergoing is solely the provenance of Hamilton thinkpiece-writers. The endless swirl of online Hamilton-buzz shows the comical extreme of cultural insularity in the New York and D.C. media. The “cultural event of our time” is totally unknown to nearly all who actually live in our time.

Given that Hamilton is essentially Captain Dan with an American Studies minor, one might wonder how it became so inordinately adored by the blathering class. How did a ten-million-dollar 8th Grade U.S. History skit become “the great work of art of the 21st century” (as the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik says those in his circle have been calling it)?

To judge from the reviews, most of the appeal seems to rest with the forced diversity of its cast and the novelty concept of a “hip-hop musical.” Those who write about Hamilton often dwell primarily on its “groundbreaking” use of rap and its “bold” choice to cast an assemblage of black, Asian, and Latino actors as the Founding Fathers. Indeed, Hamilton exists more as a corporate HR department’s wet dream than as a biographical work.

The most obvious historical aberration is the portrayal of Washington and Jefferson as black men, a somewhat audacious choice given that both men are strongly associated with owning, and in the case of the latter, raping and impregnating slaves. Changing the races allows these men to appear far more sympathetic than they would otherwise be. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda says he did this intentionally, to make the cast “look like America today,” and that having black actors play the roles “allow[s] you to leave whatever cultural baggage you have about the founding fathers at the door.” (“Cultural baggage” is an odd way of describing “feeling discomfort at warm portrayals of slaveowners.”) Thus Hamilton’s superficial diversity lets its almost entirely white audience feel good about watching it: no guilt for seeing dead white men in a positive light required. Now, The New York Times can delight in the novel incongruousness of “a Thomas Jefferson who swaggers like the Time’s Morris Day, sings like Cab Calloway and drawls like a Dirty South trap-rapper.” Indeed, it does take some getting used to, because the actual Thomas Jefferson raped slaves.

“Casting black and Latino actors as the founders effectively writes nonwhite people into the story, in ways that audiences have powerfully responded to,” said the New York Times. But fixing history makes it seem less objectionable than it actually was. We might call it a kind of, well, “blackwashing,” making something that was heinous seem somehow palatable by retroactively injecting diversity into it.

Besides, you don’t actually need to “write nonwhite people into the story.” As historians have pointed out, there were plenty of nonwhite people around at the time, people who already had fully-developed stories and identities. But none of these people appears in the play. As some have quietly noted, the vast majority of African American cast members simply portray nameless dancing founders in breeches and cravats, and “not a single enslaved or free person of color exists as a character in this play.” (Although Jefferson’s slave and mistress Sally Hemings gets a brief shout-out.)

Slavery is left out of the play almost completely. Historian Lyra Monteiro observes that “Unless one listens carefully to the lyrics—which do mention slavery a handful of times—one could easily assume that slavery did not exist in this world.” The foundation of the 18th century economic system, the vicious practice that defined the lives of countless black men and women, is confined to the odd lyrical flourish here and there.

Miranda did consider adding a slavery number. But he cut it from the show, as he explains:

There was a rap battle about slavery, where it was Hamilton and Jefferson and Madison knocking it from all sides of the issue. Jefferson being like, “Hey, I wrote about this, and no one wanted to touch it!” And Hamilton being very self-righteous, like, “You’re having an affair with one of your slaves!” And Madison hits him with a “You want to talk about affairs?” And in the end, no one does anything. Which is what happened in reality! So we realized we were bringing our show to a halt on something that none of them really did enough on.

Miranda found that by trying to write a song about his main characters’ attitudes toward slavery, he ran into the inconvenient fact that all of them willfully tolerated or participated in it. That made it difficult to square with the upbeat portrayals he was going for, and so slavery had to go. Besides, dwelling on it could “bring the show to a halt.” And as cast member Christopher Jackson, who plays George Washington, notes: ‘‘The Broadway audience doesn’t like to be preached to.” Who would want to spoil the fun?

Instead, Hamilton’s Hamilton is what Slate called simply “lovable—a product of the play’s humanizing focus on Hamilton’s vulnerabilities and ambitions.” The play avoids depicting his unabashed elitism and more repellent personal characteristics. And in the brief references that are made to slavery, the play even generously portrays Hamilton as far more committed to the cause of freedom than he actually was. In this way, Hamilton carefully makes sure its audience is neither challenged nor discomforted, and can leave the theater without having to confront any unpleasant truths.


Just as Hamilton ducks the question of slavery, much of the actual substance of Alexander Hamilton’s politics is ignored, in favor of a story that stresses his origins as a Horatio Alger immigrant and his rivalry with Aaron Burr. But while Hamilton may have favored opening America’s doors to immigration, he also proposed a degree of economic protectionism that would terrify today’s free market establishment.

Hamilton believed that free trade was never equal, and worried about the ability of European manufacturers (who got a head start on the Industrial Revolution) to sell goods at lower prices than their American counterparts. In Hamilton’s 1791 Report on Manufactures, he spoke of the harms to American industry that came with our reliance on products from overseas. The Report sheds light on many of the concerns Americans in the 21st century have about outsourcing, sweatshops, and the increasing trade deficit, albeit in a different context. Hamilton said that for the U.S., “constant and increasing necessity, on their part, for the commodities of Europe, and only a partial and occasional demand for their own, in return, could not but expose them to a state of impoverishment, compared with the opulence to which their political and natural advantages authorise them to aspire.” For Hamilton, the solution was high tariffs on imports of manufactured goods, and intensive government intervention in the economy. The prohibitive importation costs imposed by tariffs would allow newer American manufacturers to undersell Europe’s established industrial framework, leading to an increase in non-agricultural employment. As he wrote: “all the duties imposed on imported articles… wear a beneficent aspect towards the manufacturers of the country.”

Does any of this sound familiar? It certainly went unmentioned at the White House, where a custom performance of Hamilton was held for the Obamas. The livestreamed presidential Hamilton spectacular at one point featured Obama and Miranda performing historically-themed freestyle rap in the Rose Garden.

The Obamas have been supporters of Hamilton since its embryonic days as the “Hamilton Mixtape song cycle.” By the time the fully-fledged musical arrived in Washington, Michelle Obama called it the “best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life,” raising disquieting questions about the level of cultural exposure offered in the Princeton undergraduate curriculum.

In introducing the White House performance, Barack Obama gave an effusive speech worthy of the BuzzFeed Hamilton Slack:

[Miranda] identified a quintessentially American story in the character of Hamilton — a striving immigrant who escaped poverty, made his way to the New World, climbed to the top by sheer force of will and pluck and determination… And in the Hamilton that Lin-Manuel and his incredible cast and crew bring to life — a man who is “just like his country, young, scrappy, and hungry” — we recognize the improbable story of America, and the spirit that has sustained our nation for over 240 years… In this telling, rap is the language of revolution. Hip-hop is the backbeat. … And with a cast as diverse as America itself, including the outstandingly talented women — (applause) — the show reminds us that this nation was built by more than just a few great men — and that it is an inheritance that belongs to all of us.

Strangely enough, President Obama failed to mention anything Alexander Hamilton actually did during his long career in American politics, perhaps because the Obama Administration’s unwavering support of free trade and the tariff-easing Trans-Pacific Partnership goes against everything Hamilton believed. Instead, Obama’s Hamilton speech stresses just two takeaways from the musical: that America is a place where the poor (through “sheer force of will” and little else) can rise to prominence, and that Hamilton has diversity in it. (Plus it contains hip-hop, an edgy, up-and-coming genre with only 37 years of mainstream exposure.)

The Obamas were not the only members of the political establishment to come down with a ghastly case of Hamiltonmania. Nearly every figure in D.C. has apparently been to see the show, in many cases being invited for a warm backstage schmooze with Miranda. Biden saw it. Mitt Romney saw it. The Bush daughters saw it. Rahm Emanuel saw it the day after the Chicago teachers’ strike over budget cuts and school closures. Hillary Clinton went to see the musical in the evening after having been interviewed by the FBI in the morning. The Clinton campaign has also been fundraising by hawking Hamilton tickets; for $100,000 you can watch a performance alongside Clinton herself.

Unsurprisingly, the New York Times reports that “conservatives were particularly smitten” with Hamilton. “Fabulous show,” tweeted Rupert Murdoch, calling it “historically accurate.” Obama concluded that “I’m pretty sure this is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I have agreed on—during my entire political career.” (That is, of course, false. Other points of agreement include drone strikes, Guantanamo, the NSA, and mass deportation.)

The conservative-liberal D.C. consensus on Hamilton makes perfect sense. The musical flatters both right and left sensibilities. Conservatives get to see their beloved Founding Fathers exonerated for their horrendous crimes, and liberals get to have nationalism packaged in a feel-good multicultural form. The more troubling questions about the country’s origins are instantly vanished, as an era built on racist forced labor is transformed into a colorful, culturally progressive, and politically unobjectionable extravaganza.

As the director of the Hamilton theater said, “It has liberated a lot of people who might feel ambivalent about the American experiment to feel patriotic.” “Ambivalence,” here, means being bothered by the country’s collective idol-worship of men who participated in the slave trade, one of the greatest crimes in human history. To be “liberated” from this means never having to think about it.

In that respect, Hamilton probably is the “musical of the Obama era,” as The New Yorker called it. Contemporary progressivism has come to mean papering over material inequality with representational diversity. The president will continue to expand the national security state at the same rate as his predecessor, but at least he will be black. Predatory lending will drain the wealth from African American communities, but the board of Goldman Sachs will have several black members. Inequality will be rampant and worsening, but the 1% will at least “look like America.” The actual racial injustices of our time will continue unabated, but the power structure will be diversified so that nobody feels quite so bad about it. Hamilton is simply this tendency’s cultural-historical equivalent; instead of worrying ourselves about the brutal origins of the American state, and the lasting economic effects of those early inequities, we can simply turn the Founding Fathers black and enjoy the show.

Kings George I and II of England could barely speak intelligible English and spent more time dealing with their own failed sons than ruling the Empire —but they gave patronage to Handel. Ludwig II of Bavaria was believed to be insane and went into debt compulsively building castles — but he gave patronage to Wagner. Barack Obama deported more immigrants than any other president and expanded the drone program in order to kill almost 3,500 people — but he gave patronage to a neoliberal nerdcore musical. God bless this great land.

This article originally appeared in our July/August print edition.

[norton ash]

Looks like a clever high-energy entertainment from what I've seen.

For Elvis: If Elvis is Jesus, the Church is Colonel Tom Parker.

[JackRiddler]

No need to pay $1000 or scam Gilder-Lehrman or Rockefeller foundations to front you student tickets. The whole of Hamilton is available online, legally, in the "animatic" version, with many excellent artists involved. I expected the superficial, dull, incompetent politics (I think "incompetent" is the right word), but the mangling of any relation to the history, even the traditional mythic version, is worse than I expected.

A couple of the tunes are good.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0tkdaSTZho

[Elvis]

https://www.80grados.net/miranda-an-american-tragedy/

Miranda: An American Tragedy
Ana Portnoy Brimmer Publicado: 22 de marzo de 2019

cual es tu titular, mano.
a nuestras espaldas y en nuestras caras,
no queremos tus favores.
[…]
no es que seas el peor, es que eres
la no-me-toques-la-diplomacia,
bien vestido donde nos siguen vendiendo, coartando,
e inviertes.

what’s your headline, man.
behind our backs and in our faces,
we don’t want your favors.
[…]
it’s not that you are the worst, it’s that you are
the don’t-touch-my-diplomacy,
looking sharp into
where they keep selling, cutting us off / and you invest.

-Raquel Salas Rivera, “Hamilton”

I haven’t seen Hamilton. Nor do I want to, or feel it necessary to proceed with these spiraling ruminations. Enough think-pieces have been written on the contradictory politics of the show or nature of the lead character; enough historians have emerged from the cobwebs to point out inaccuracies or conduct much-needed revisionist critiques of the storyline. I won’t even bother discussing the grotesque irony behind the performance of this play in a U.S. Caribbean colony, one of the oldest (if not the oldest) remaining colonies in the world: Puerto Rico. A play that glorifies the founding fathers[1], and the “independence” and “birth” of the nation that currently holds my archipelago hostage—this is a whole other monster in and of itself.

No. No more with the eerie tentacles of this play or Hamilton as character. What took place beyond the frilled curtain? Beyond the theater’s velvet walls and security ranks flanking the perimeters of the Fine Arts Center in Santurce, Puerto Rico? There was a larger, more insidious show running on the island, a clandestine yet painfully visible performance, with our hurricane ravaged reality as the stage, and Lin-Manuel Miranda as the star performer, director, producer and orchestra conductor—orchestrator, of this multi-act madness.

◆◆◆

On November 8, 2017, nearly two months after hurricane María’s passing over Puerto Rico, Lin-Manuel Miranda announced, on the grounds of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras Campus, that Hamilton was coming to the island, and would be staged in the theater of that very educational institution. A group of students interrupted his announcement ceremony and Q&A session, upholding banners that read, “Lin-Manuel, nuestras vidas no son tu teatro[2]” and “Free Puerto Rico.”

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR), the only public higher education institution on the island[3], had recently endured the pummeling of two category 5 hurricanes, and was recovering from a two-month long strike that took place the semester before. The reasons behind the strike are many and entangled, and to understand them, Puerto Rico’s current historic moment must be understood as well.

After a thirteen-years long economic recession that started in 2006, and illegal bond issuances to keep the archipelago running, Puerto Rico fell into a debt hole the size of $74 billion in bonds, plus $49 billion in pension obligations, the likes of which have yet to be audited. The United States Congress, colonial overseer of this Caribbean archipelago, alongside former president Barack Obama, crafted and signed the PROMESA bill[4] into law, and imposed a Fiscal Oversight and Management Board (locally known as the Fiscal Control Board, or La Junta) onto Puerto Rico, to handle the archipelago’s finances. It was endowed with overly-slippery power and jurisdiction over policy-making and legislation in Puerto Rico, and the privilege of not being liable for its actions.

The Fiscal Control Board flew in on a private jet with an austerity campaign that has been active to this very day, slashing budgets and protections to essential public services and resources, such as health, infrastructure, natural reserves, pensions, and among these, public higher education.

The University of Puerto Rico has a long history of resistance: in 1919, students fought for freedom of expression, and against U.S. intervention in Puerto Rico. In 1921, they railed against the prohibition of the Puerto Rican flag on campus grounds. In the 1960s, the student movement mobilized for the demilitarization of the University and in protest of the Vietnam war. In 1981, the University went on strike against steep increases in tuition costs, and in 2010, against increases in student fees and the elimination of tuition exemptions[5]. And in 2017, the entire UPR system (made up of eleven campuses) went on an indefinite strike, opposing the proposed draconian budget cuts to the University in addition to other measures, and protesting the wider economic crisis in Puerto Rico.

After the strike, exhaustion plagued even those in physical proximity to the University, and to further aggravate the situation, Hurricanes Irma and María struck Puerto Rico. This cacophony of crises further stirred up the hornet’s nest of conflict within the University, and exacerbated political unrest on the archipelago.

In the context of this moment, Lin-Manuel Miranda, son of Puerto Rico’s historic diaspora, thought it appropriate to place himself at the very center of the archipelago’s chaos, make a spectacle of the catastrophe, and call it philanthropy.

“We’re going to be doing this thing where we’re trying to attract tourism: ‘Hey, come see Lin-Manuel in Hamilton’; but we’re also […] prioritizing tickets at a rate that Puerto Ricans on the island can afford to see it and see it every night, so that thousands of students, thousands of Puerto Ricans can see the show. But we’ll be here. And I’m really excited to announce that and to plant that flag in the sand for us to work towards together[6],” Miranda proclaimed into a crowd of University bureaucrats and students.

There’s something about the image of planting a flag that doesn’t sit right with a colonized people. Something about tourism as recovery (and in Puerto Rico’s case, as a decades-long colonial venture). Something about selling “affordable” tickets for an imperialist play to hurricane survivors, and insisting this will save them. Something about placing “Lin-Manuel in Hamilton” at the centerstage of disaster.

The embattled student banners echoed, reverberating across the makeshift island-stage: Lin-Manuel, nuestras vidas no son tu teatro. Free Puerto Rico.

◆◆◆

Tensions with Miranda started with his support of the PROMESA bill[7]. Which is a reflection, not only of his political stance and affiliations[8], but also of the oftentimes profound experiential gap between diaspora and archipelago as well. Many movements and sectors of Puerto Rico (including movements and sectors of the Puerto Rican diaspora) have been fighting PROMESA from its very conception, criticizing its undemocratic, teetering towards dictatorial, character, and drawing attention to Congress’s outward and gaudy flexing of its colonialist muscle. Miranda’s alienation from the realities of Puerto Rico, or rather, his catering to a particular and powerful political class, have been at the center of this archipelago-wide debate.

And it was his alienation from the realities of those living on the archipelago, and the problematic stances it entailed, that devolved into the complex and messy production Miranda made of Puerto Rico.

“I am super conscious that I hold a big megaphone, and at the same time, am conscious that I do not live in Puerto Rico and I always want to be careful. What I want is to amplify the voices coming from Puerto Rico, but never with a recipe for Puerto Rico, because I am from New York, and if someone who isn’t from New York came to tell me how to run New York, I would be offended. I would say, ‘you don’t even live here.’ […] At the end of the day, I am a kid from New York with Puerto Rican parents who wants the island to be proud of me,[9]” Miranda offered up in response to a letter sent to him by UPR’s non-teaching union, warning that they were currently engaged in an ongoing struggle with the University administration, and if certain agreements couldn’t be arrived to, they might be forced to go on strike, and his production could be affected.

Miranda’s response reads like the standpoint of a person with a critical and self-reflective awareness of his positionality in relation to a place. But praxis lies a long ways away from empty discourse.

After his declaration that he would be staging Hamilton in UPR-Río Piedras’s theater, Lin-Manuel Miranda barely consulted or engaged in horizontal and direct conversations with the university communities that struggle and toil day-in and day-out, the people who inhabit and hold the institution together: the students, faculty and non-teaching staff. And speaking of conversations, he was also unaware of or indifferent to the larger conversation and conflict around the University itself, and his disruption of the political processes taking place—how he might’ve affected or hindered them. There was no genuine attempt to learn or understand what the university communities needed, and how they could be aided and helped, rather than taken over and invisibilized. No effort to explore how the ongoing artistic projects and initiatives of these communities could be advanced, rather than imposing his own, and claiming it was for the sake and benefit of the University.

Money was the excuse and justification behind this venture. Because Miranda invested money in the theater’s rehabilitation, he acted like he was entitled to overrun and overrule internal community dynamics, and play house within a space that is currently under threat of losing its accreditation[10]. Because the play was fundraising money for “the arts” in Puerto Rico, he acted like he had the right to override the voices and claims of those living the precarious dismantling of the only public higher education institution on the archipelago.

By taking over the University theater, Miranda displaced students and professors, whose classroom and academic space was the theater itself. Collaborative efforts, involving the university communities in the production of the play, were minimal, eventually making the gesture of opening auditions to local talent and offering up four unpaid internships to select theater and/or music majors[11], as the University makes it almost impossible for a large portion of the student body to afford tuition and related expenses. University money, that was by no means available before to meet the needs of the community—the educational institution’s wallet as dry as the faucets of thousands of Hurricane María survivors—was all of a sudden appearing from thin air to beautify the campus in preparation for the play.

When Miranda received the letter from UPR’s non-teaching union, warning him that his production could be affected if they went on strike (which they later followed up with another letter assuring Miranda that they wouldn’t paralyze the campus until after the run of his production), he and his father decided to move the play elsewhere, blaming the non-teaching union and claiming they had security concerns if a strike or protests were to break out.[12] Furthermore, they didn’t solidarize themselves with the realities of the university communities, or even think of adapting their production to work with the strike or whatever demonstration arose[13]. The governor of Puerto Rico arranged for the play to be staged in the Fine Arts Center of Santurce[14], in San Juan, displacing performances of the original programming[15].

This displacement of scheduled performers only continues to showcase Miranda’s lack of engagement with and/or mere indifference to the larger artistic and cultural communities of Puerto Rico. Once again, instead of bringing his own play—his own masterpiece—why not collaborate with and directly aid local artistic and cultural initiatives? Imbuing his play with a savior quality not only perpetuates a dynamic of coloniality, but subtly invisibilizes the efforts and existence of local initiatives doing recovery work through art and culture as well, and presupposes us incapable of saving ourselves, or rather, of needing saving at all.

Why not run low-budget, absolutely public versions of the play, in accessible spaces, for the community? The Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, a first-class musical gem of the archipelago, which is housed by the Fine Arts Center as well, took to different towns around Puerto Rico after Hurricane María, offering free concerts in the public plaza of each town to bring music, healing and hope to communities after the storm’s humanitarian and political blow[16]. Selling hurricane survivors their recovery and salvation in “cheap” tickets[17] only adds insult to injury.

Hamilton’s debut in Puerto Rico also tapped into one of the archipelago’s largest, and most sinisterly problematic, industries: tourism. The discourse around Hamilton and Miranda’s arrival to Puerto Rico, more than circulating “recovery” rhetoric, zoned in on making a safari of the archipelago’s reality. Rather than genuinely focusing on and engaging with the affected communities in Puerto Rico, Hamilton catered to the people desirous to come to Puerto Rico.

The language of exclusive Hamilton travel packages:

“Get to Know Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Puerto Rican Culture.”

“Learn about the island culture that both Alexander Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda share.”

“Take a trip to Loíza, the epicenter of Puerto Rican culture, before experiencing the tales of one of America’s Founding Fathers.”

“Visit Vega Alta, the picturesque hometown of the Miranda family.[18]”

Mass tourism contributes to Puerto Rico’s subservience to the United States, feeds foreign companies and luxury hotels, and is transforming the archipelago into an archipelago-resort[19]. We continue steering and churning out individuals into the hospitality and service industry, growing into a population that works and lives around the tourist experience, rather than advancing our own—our growth, subsistence and sovereignty. Tourism was and continues to be one of colonialism’s slyest enterprises, from its impact on concrete aspects of the archipelago and Puerto Rican lives (the environment, land and long-standing communities, local businesses, etc.) to the more abstract: perpetuating the toxic idea of “paradise”, the exoticization of the archipelago, the fantasy-making of a people’s reality—and given Puerto Rico’s recent climatic struggle—romanticizing disaster and a people’s recovery. Hamilton urged mindless tourists, wealthy voyeurists, safari seekers, the ravagers of Puerto Rico’s ravaging, to come to a Puerto Rico—a home—Lin-Manuel Miranda claims his own, but has barely made an effort to understand, or listen to.

Miranda’s involvement with problematic initiatives goes even further, as he partners up with Starbucks, Nestlé and the Rockefeller Foundation to “revive” Puerto Rico’s coffee industry[20]. After hurricane María, about 80% of the island’s coffee crops were destroyed, and seeds were running scarce. As is the history and pattern of the Hispanic Federation—which Miranda’s father runs—Miranda shook hands with these controversial coffee corporations and private foundation, not just investing (yes, not donating, investing) money in the industry, but introducing “climate resistant” seeds and training sessions for small, local coffee growers and farmers in Puerto Rico. Many worry about the quality and political-economic implications of the seeds. Many are insulted by the thought that trainings are necessary on an archipelago that has been growing and distributing coffee for centuries. But to show his commitment to agriculture and the people of Puerto Rico, Miranda tattooed a miniature, barely visible, coffee cup on his ankle—a true sign of solidarity.

Come, visit, explore, “Get to Know Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Puerto Rican Culture,” which he has yet to know himself.

◆◆◆

On a wall of the Humanities building at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras Campus, I came across words scribbled in permanent marker on the vertical concrete: Fuck Hamilton. Which is a legitimate and factually-founded sentiment, of course. Especially in the context of Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony. Alexander Hamilton is a despicable character in the history of the United States; and the play, if anything, only appears to aggrandize him[21].

But the lack of focus on Lin-Manuel Miranda as character, as problematic figure in Puerto Rico post-María, must be addressed as well. If we were conducting, say, as part of a literature or theater course, a character analysis of Lin-Manuel Miranda, as the main performer of this island-play, we could start by saying that Miranda is a man that performs coloniality. That as a Puerto Rican himself—but a member of a higher, ruling, white(passing), out-of-island Puerto Rican class[22]—he enacts the living legacy and reality of colonialism. He comes from the outside in, dictating and imposing, with careful subtlety, his plays and ways, as many a people—his people—are stepped on and railing against it.

The character of Miranda is conveniently unaware of his positionality, someone who wears the badge of Puerto Rico (as he has every right to), but does not inhabit it, does not live its complex realities or endure its daily blows, and yet feels the impulse to swoop in and orchestrate as if he does. Miranda’s Puertorriqueñidad[23] is not on trial—this is rather, and more importantly, a critique of his approach to and engagement with the archipelago and those who live it. Puerto Ricanness transcends geographic boundaries—however, it’s important to recognize the experiential differences between being a Puerto Rican from the archipelago and being a Puerto Rican from the diaspora, not because either is superior or normative, but because both entail specific living histories and realities. Ultimately, it’s a question of how those who inhabit power and privilege (whether on or from the archipelago or diaspora) perform or exert them.

Yes, Miranda’s character raised money for the arts in the archipelago with his Fundación Flamboyán; yes, Miranda has been funneling capital into Puerto Rico. But there’s something to be said of the overly-public nature of this act, of the spectacle required for the fundraising and “saving” of Puerto Rico to occur, of the Jimmy Fallon-ing[24] and New York Times-ing[25] of his philanthropy. Had he brought his play to Puerto Rico under any other circumstances, there would be no collective outrage (or from another standpoint, at least), no meticulous dissection of his arrival (or in smaller doses), this piece would’ve never been written in the first place. But there’s a grotesque calculation, an overt capitalization of Puerto Rico’s current historic juncture, and Miranda’s media-savvy moves, public charlatan-esque attempts at solidarity, and flagrant self-promotion do nothing to disprove it. But again, the character of Miranda thinks and communicates in money. He cannot conceive of help, of building alternate futures, of new imaginaries and possibilities for Puerto Rico in any other way.

Finally, in the process of his own character development, Miranda antagonized and misrepresented the claims and opposition of the University and other sectors of the island that questioned his play, his intentions, his maneuvering of the stage props around him.

◆◆◆

“In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet,” Lin-Manuel Miranda sang as Hamilton during the first of seventeen days of performances at the Fine Arts Center[26]. As himself, Miranda claimed that “we survived hurricane season[27].” We. A systematic inclusion of himself in the struggles and proclamations of existence and resistance of the hurricane survivors on the archipelago.

There exist multiple Puerto Ricos within Puerto Rico—stratified and segmented by class, race, region, gender and sexuality, age, immigration-background, religion, political and ideological affiliations, the list goes on. Luis Miranda, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s father, explained that his son’s initiative “was not only to experience Hamilton in its artistic value, but also to leave Puerto Rico a little better than we found it.[28]”

Whose or what Puerto Rico did they “leave a little better”?

One thing is for sure: Miranda and his traveling show, like hurricane María, came and left Puerto Rico—leaving the archipelago, however, just as they found it: devastao’, devastao’—pero nunca arrodilla’o[29].

_____________

References

[1] “Historianas Irked by Musical ‘Hamilton’ Escalate Their Duel”, The New York Times, by The Associated Press

[2] “Lin-Manuel, our lives are not your theater”

[3] The Conservatorio de Música and the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico are both public higher education institutions as well, but they are specialized institutions.

[4] A 2016 US federal law that established an oversight board, a process for restructuring debt, and expedited procedures for approving critical infrastructure projects in order to combat the Puerto Rican government debt crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROMESA

[5] “Breve historia de las luchas estudiantiles y laborales en la Universidad de Puerto Rico-Parte 1”, El Abayarde Rojo

[6] “Lin-Manuel Miranda Traerá Hamilton a Puerto Rico”, El Nuevo Día, by Mariela Fullana Acosta

[7] Which, after public controversy and outrage, he later retracted.

[8] Note that his father is Luis A. Miranda, political lobbyist and founder of the controversial and corporate-courting nonprofit organization, The Hispanic Federation. Refer to: “NYC Political Funding Shenanigans With Hispanic Federation and City Council Speaker”, Nonprofit Quarterly, by Rick Cohen.

[9] “Lin-Manuel Miranda está preocupado por la carta de la Heend” El Nuevo Día, by Ana Teresa Toro (quote translated into English by author of this piece)

[10] “All 11 U of Puerto Rico Institutions Placed on Show Cause”, Inside Higher Ed, by Rick Seltzer

[11] “Lin Manuel Miranda’s Passion for Puerto Rico”, The New York Times, by Michael Paulson

[12] The University of Puerto Rico has historically regulated and restricted police presence on all campuses.

[13] UPR-Río Piedra’s strikes, as the strikes of the other ten UPR campuses, are famous for their educational, cultural and political outreach work with the community surrounding the campus.

[14] “El gobernador ofreció el Centro de Bellas Artes como alternativa para acoger la obra ‘Hamilton’”, El Nuevo Día, by Camile Roldán Soto

[15] “Producción que confligía con Hamilton llega a un acuerdo con Bellas Artes”, Primera Hora, by Primerahora.com

[16] “Directo a la fibra del pueblo”, Fundación Nacional Para la Cultural Popular, by Jaime Torres Torres

[17] Not to mention that the “cheap” tickets were limited in number, and sold in raffle form.

[18] Discover Puerto Rico: https://welcome.discoverpuertorico.com/hamilton

[19] Refer to, “The Caribbean continues to be advertised and marketed in North American venues as local “paradise”-near, yet remote; familiar, but exotic; luxurious and green,” by Jana Evans Braziel; A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid; etc.

[20] “Lin-Manuel Miranda is trying to revive Puerto Rico’s devastated coffee industry”, Miami Herald, by Jim Wyss

[21] For more on the problematics of Hamilton as play, refer to Ishmael Reed’s counter-play and critiques of it: “Ishmael Reed’s Play Challenging ‘Hamilton’ Will Get Reading”, The New York Times, by Sopan Deb

[22] Not to mention his gender and sexuality privileges as well, as a cis-hetero man.

[23] Puerto Ricanness

[24] “Jimmy Fallon will do special ‘Tonight Show’ in Puerto Rico with Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘Hamilton’ cast”, NBCNews, by Nicole Acevedo

[25] “Lin Manuel Miranda’s Passion for Puerto Rico”, The New York Times, by Michael Paulson

[26] “The Mixed Reception of the Hamilton Premiere in Puerto Rico”, The Atlantic, by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

[27] “Lin-Manuel Miranda está preocupado por la carta de la Heend”, El Nuevo Día, by Ana Teresa Toro (quote translated into English by author of this piece)

[28] “The Mixed Reception of the Hamilton Premiere in Puerto Rico”, The Atlantic, by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

[29] Devastated, devastated, but never on its knees.

[JackRiddler]

A mild public backlash has finally hit this thing. Just a little. I'd rather the laughter had swept it away on opening night, but it had been backed by the Gilder-Lehrman foundation (who helped launch the new Founders' Chic, focused especially on AH as the original American mega-capitalist). A lot of Rockefeller money went into tickets for high schoolers. At least on RI it's no joke or crazy thing to say that this was a piece of cultural engineering by a couple of usual-suspect foundations.

Fun fact, in case you haven't heard it, about the later PROMESA supporter and co-star of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 (?). LMN went to high school with none other than Felipe Andres Coronel a.k.a. Immortal Technique. This was, erm, maybe one or two, or maybe twenty or eighty years after I graduated from the same school. (Ah, not so long, I'm only 13-15 years older than them.) So the story as LMN told it in an interview is that FAC bullied him, and at least once picked up LMN and planted him in a garbage can. Which is a funny thing to visualize, if you've seen both of them and consider their relative proportions, but FAC was older and presumably the relatively bigger one in high school. Please note that though I cannot help but laugh, I do not approve of this behavior! I bet it is at least mildly embarrassing to FAC today. They say they are now friends. It is good that no one was hurt, or arrested, or expelled. For all we know, these torments reinforced LMN's desire to kiss up to polite society.

What a contrast. Why isn't IT's work the basis of a Broadway play? Especially this greatest of cuts. It's a fictionalization, or a set of ideal cases, but better grounded in real history than Hamilton. While it wouldn't earn him that degree, it should have been good for at least a masters in sociology.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sTBSKT79H8

Immortal Technique - Peruvian Cocaine feat Diabolic, Tonedeff, Poison Pen, Loucipher, C-Rayz Walz

[Clip from Scarface]
- I've heard whispers about a financial support your government receives from the drug industry in Bolivia.
- Well, the irony of this, of course, is that this money, which is in the billions, is coming from your country.
- You see, you are the major purchaser of our national product, which is, of course, cocaina - cocaine.
- On one hand, you're saying the US Government is spending millions to eliminate the flow of drugs onto our streets.
- At the same time, we are doing business with the very same government that is flooding our streets with cocaine.
- Let me show you a few of the other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy.

1. [Immortal Technique - Worker]
I'm on the border of Bolivia, working for pennies
Treated like a slave, the coca fields have to be ready
The spirit of my people is starving, broken and sweaty
Dreaming about revolution (backups: Revolution!) looking at my machete
But the workload is too heavy to rise up in arms
And if I ran away, I know they'd probably murder my moms
So I pray to Heiso Preisto when I go to the mission
Process the cocaine paste, pays to play my position

2. [Pumpkinhead - Cocaine Field Boss]
Ok, listen, Juan Valdez, just get me my product
Before we chop off your hands for worker's misconduct
I got the power to shoot a copper, and not get charged
And it would be sad to see your family in front of a firing squad
So, to feed your kids? I need these bricks
Forty tons in total, let me test it, indeed, I
-- Shit, this is good, pass me a tissue --
And don't worry about them, I paid off the official

3. [Diabolic - Peruvian Leader]
Yo, it don't come as a challenge, I'm the son of some of the foulest
Elected by my people, the only one on the ballot
Born and bred to consult with feds, I laugh at fate
And assassinate my predecessor to have his place
In a Third World fascist state, lock the nation
With 90% of the wealth in 10% of the population
The Central Intelligence Agency takes weight faithfully
The finest type of China white and cocaine, you'll see

4. (super-white voice) [Tonedeff - American Drug Distributor]
Honey, I'm home! Never mind why your bank account's suddenly grown
It's funny we're so out of this debt from this money we owe!
Would you run if I told you that I had two governments overthrown
To keep our son enrolled in a private school and to keep our tummies swollen?
Come on, our fucking home was built on a foundation of bloody throats
The hungry stolen of their souls, of course this country's running coke
I took a stunted oath to hush the ones who know
The CIA conducts the flow for these young hustlers that lust for dough

5. [Poison Pen - Drug Dealer]
I don't work in the hood, hit my connect
That's what's really good
They supply work to the hood
These dudes fucking crack me up
Scrutinized like we inferior, petrified when we meet in my area
My dudes don't shoot until I say so, you got the loot?
Give me the "Yay-Yay!" Like Ice Cube, so don't play with my yayo
We won't stop for you bastards
My street scramblers chop it and bag it

6. [Loucipher - Undercover Police Officer]
Taking pictures and tapping phones, debating snitches and cracking codes
Fast to cuff or blast the fo' on any hustler stacking dough
There's probably crack or blow
And my overtime is where your taxes go
I'll gain your trust get you to hand weight to us 'cause we paid up front
On the low with cameras taping ya, getting pop away?
The prison sentence is due, make the call
And then leave with two keys out the evidence room

7. & 8. [C-Rayz Walz - Prison Inmate] (duet)
Out the evidence room (*Said with Loucipher*)
With my fame, truck, boat, or plane, they're watching you
You think you got work? They copping too!
We control blocks, they lock countries and own companies
We had nice cars and sneaker money!
Now there's players out there talking 'bout they holding
With bugs in their house like they down South with windows open
Your dough ain't long, you wrong, you take shorts and soon
Feds'll be up in your mouth like forks and spoons
So enjoy the rush, live plush off coke bread
Soon you'll be in a cell with me like Jenny Lopez
In school I was a bully now life is fully a joke
I'll keep afloat on a boat for Peruvian coke
Players do favors for governors and tax makers
Fat Quakers smoke crack and sex acts with bad mayors
The walls got ears, you bigmouths probably scared
Not prepared to do years like Javier

[PRISON BARS SLAM!]

[Immortal Technique Speaking]
The story just told is an example of the path that
drugs take on their way to every neighborhood, in
every state of this country. It's a lot deeper than
the niggas on your block. So when they point the
finger at you, brother men, this is what you've got to tell them:

[Clip from New Jack City]

[Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes)] I'm not guilty. *You're* the one that's guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick the ballistics here: Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than [edited in: "Immortal Technique"]. This is big business. This is the American way.

Songwriters: Douglas Toure Harris / Felipe Andres Coronel / Sean Edward George
Peruvian Cocaine lyrics © Great South Bay Music Group Inc
Artist
Immortal Technique feat. C Rayz Walz, Pumpkinhead, Loucipher, Tonedeff, Diabolic, Poison Pen
Album
Revolutionary Vol. 2
Licensed to YouTube by
INgrooves (on behalf of Viper Records); ASCAP, LatinAutor, ARESA, Rumblefish (Publishing), and 13 Music Rights Societies

[stickdog99]

[Cordelia]

Are you, too, leery of the wave of breathless Hamiltonmania?

No........ Aaron Burr was so courageously outspoken on Broadway after the 2016 election!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BaLh7pHKXw





eta, on second thought, I'm disappointed; it's a musical; out of respect for the genre, Burr should have sung his speech.

[JackRiddler]

He's got a kind of programmatic blindness to Jefferson but this is good, with some really interesting bits he includes: the Gilder-Lehrman influence, the earlier Hamilton mania of Andrew Mellon, etc.

Matt Stoller

The Hamilton Hustle
Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder

The Baffler No. 34, March 2017
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hamilton-hustle-stoller

The Hamilton Hustle | Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Open Markets Program at New America.
28-36 minutes
As Donald Trump settles into the White House, elites in the political class are beginning to recognize that democracy is not necessarily a permanent state of political organization. “Donald Trump’s candidacy is the first time American politics has left me truly afraid,” wrote Vox cofounder Ezra Klein just before the election. Andrew Sullivan argued in New York magazine that American democracy is susceptible, “in stressful times, to the appeal of a shameless demagogue.” Paul Krugman wrote an entire column on why republics end, citing Trump’s violations of political norms. But if you want to understand the politics of authoritarianism in America, the place to start is not with Trump, but with the cool-kid Founding Father of the Obama era, Alexander Hamilton.

I’m not just talking about the actual founder, though we’ll come back to him. I’m talking about the personage at the center of the Broadway musical, Hamilton.

The show is a Tony Award–winning smash hit, propelling its writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, to dizzying heights of fame and influence. It is America’s Les Misérables, an achingly beautiful and funny piece of theater about a most unlikely icon of democratic inclusiveness, Alexander Hamilton.

I’m not going to dissect the show itself—the politics of it are what require reexamination in the wake of Trump. However, it should be granted one unqualified plaudit at the outset: Miranda’s play is one of the most brilliant propaganda pieces in theatrical history. And its construction and success tell us a lot about our current political moment. Before it was even written, the play was nurtured at the highest levels of the political establishment. While working through its material, Miranda road-tested song lyrics at the White House with President Obama. When it was performed, Obama, naturally, loved it. Hamilton, he said, “reminds us of the vital, crazy, kinetic energy that’s at the heart of America.” Michelle Obama pronounced it the best art she had ever seen.

The first couple’s comments were just the leading edge of a cultural explosion of praise. Actress Kerry Washington called it “life changing.” Lena Dunham said, “If every kid in America could see Hamilton they would thirst for historical knowledge and then show up to vote.” Saturday Night Live featured a sketch wherein Lorne Michaels begged guest host Miranda for Hamilton tickets (“I can do a matinee!”). It’s perhaps harder to list celebrities who haven’t seen Hamilton than those who have. And in Washington, D.C., politicians who haven’t seen the show are considered uncool.

Admiration for the play crossed the political spectrum. Conservative pop-historian Niall Ferguson opened up a book talk, according to one witness on Twitter, “with a rap set to music inspired by Hamilton.” Former secretaries of the treasury praised it, from Tim Geithner to Jack Lew to Hank Paulson. So did Dick Cheney, prompting Obama to note that the wonder of the play was perhaps the only thing the two men agreed on. Trevor Noah asked if Bernie Sanders, who had just seen the play, ran for president just so he would be able to get tickets. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former White House chief of staff, raised eyebrows by jetting off to New York City to see a performance of Hamilton the night after Chicago teachers went on strike.

Much of the turn toward white supremacy in the early 1800s can be laid at Alexander Hamilton’s feet.

It’s not just that Hamilton is about a founding father, and thus inherently making statements about who we are as a culture. It’s become a status symbol within the Democratic establishment, offering them the chastened consolation that they might still claim solidarity with the nascent American democracy of the eighteenth century that’s stubbornly eluded them in the present-day political scene. Hillary Clinton quoted the play in her speech accepting the Democratic nomination, and told a young voter, “I’ve seen the show three times and I’ve cried every time—and danced hard in my seat.” The play has become a political football in the era of Trump. When Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, saw the show, one of the cast members read him a special note, written by Miranda and several cast members, asking Pence to protect all of America. Hamilton cast members helped lead the Women’s March in Chicago to protest Trump’s inauguration. Right-wing website Breitbart has a hostile mini-Hamilton beat, noting that the play’s producers specifically requested non-white actors to fill the cast.

And after Trump won, Hamilton became a refuge. Journalist Nancy Youssef tweeted she overheard someone at the Pentagon say, “I am reaffirming my belief in democracy by listening to the Hamilton soundtrack.”

Beast Master

What’s strange about all of this praise is how it presumes that Alexander Hamilton was a figure for whom social justice and democracy were key animating traits. Given how Democrats, in particular, embraced the show and Hamilton himself as a paragon of social justice, you would think that he had fought to enlarge the democratic rights of all Americans. But Alexander Hamilton simply didn’t believe in democracy, which he labeled an American “disease.” He fought—with military force—any model of organizing the American political economy that might promote egalitarian politics. He was an authoritarian, and proud of it.

To assert Hamilton disliked democracy is not controversial. The great historian Henry Adams described an evening at a New York dinner, when Hamilton replied to democratic sentiment by banging the table and saying, “Your people, sir—your people is a great beast!” Hamilton’s recommendation to the Constitutional Convention, for instance, was to have a president for life, and to explicitly make that president not subject to law.

Professional historians generally avoid emphasizing Hamilton’s disdain for the people, at least when they write for the broad public. Better to steer safely clear of the freight train of publicity and money behind the modern Hamilton myth. One exception is amateur historian William Hogeland, who noted in a recent Boston Review essay that Hamilton had strong authoritarian tendencies. Hamilton, he wrote, consistently emphasized “the essential relationship between the concentration of national wealth and the obstruction of democracy through military force.”

Indeed, most of Hamilton’s legacy is astonishingly counter-democratic. His central role in founding both the financial infrastructure of Wall Street and a nascent military establishment (which supplanted the colonial system of locally controlled democratic militias) was rooted in his self-appointed crusade to undermine the ability of ordinary Americans to govern themselves. We should be grateful not that Hamilton structured the essential institutions of America to fit his vision, but that he failed to do so. Had he succeeded, we would probably be living in a military dictatorship.

Father of Finance

Viewers of the play Hamilton have a difficult time grasping this point. It just seems outlandish that an important American political official would argue that democracy was an actively bad system. Sure, America’s leadership caste has done plenty on its own to subvert the legal norms and folkways of self-rule, via voting restrictions, lobbying and corruption, and other appurtenances of access-driven self-dealing. But the idea of openly opposing the hallowed ideal of popular self-government is simply inconsistent with the past two hundred years of American political culture. And this is because, in the election of 1800, when Hamilton and his Federalist allies were finally crushed, America repudiated aristocracy and began the long journey toward establishing a democratic political culture and undoing some, though not all, of the damage wrought by Hamilton’s plutocratic-leaning Federalist Party.

Hamilton’s name practically became an epithet among Democrats of the New Deal era, which makes it all the more surprising that he is the darling of the modern party.

Indeed, the shifting popular image of Hamilton is itself a gauge of the relative strength of democratic institutions at any given moment. In the roaring 1920s, when Wall Street lorded it over all facets of our public life, treasury secretary Andrew Mellon put Hamilton’s face on the ten-dollar bill. Mellon was the third richest man in the country, famous for, among other things, having his brother and chairman of one of his coal mining subsidiaries extoll the virtues of using machine guns to enforce labor discipline. Mellon himself, who later presided over the Great Depression, was routinely lauded by big business interests as the “greatest secretary of the treasury since Alexander Hamilton.” Big business leaders in Pittsburgh, such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, worshipped Hamilton (as well as Napoleon).

During the next decade, as populists put constraints on big money, Hamilton fell into disrepute. In 1925, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then just a lawyer, recognized Hamilton as an authoritarian, saying that he had in his mind after reading a popular new book on Hamilton and Jefferson “a picture of escape after escape which this nation passed through in those first ten years; a picture of what might have been if the Republic had been finally organized as Alexander Hamilton sought.” By 1947, a post-war congressional report titled “Fascism in Action” listed Hamilton as one intellectual inspiration for the Nazi regime. Hamilton’s name practically became an epithet among Democrats of the New Deal era, which makes it all the more surprising that he is the darling of the modern party.

Within this context, it’s useful to recognize that Hamilton the play is not the real story of Alexander Hamilton; rather, as historian Nancy Isenberg has noted, it’s a revealing parable about the politics of the finance-friendly Obama era. The play is based on Ron Chernow’s eight-hundred-page 2004 biography of Hamilton. Chernow argues that “Hamilton was an abolitionist who opposed states’ rights, favored an activist central government, a very liberal interpretation of the Constitution and executive rather than legislative powers.” Hamilton, he notes, “sounds . . . like a modern Democrat.” The abolition arguments are laughably false; Hamilton married into a slaveholding family and traded slaves himself. But they are only part of a much broader obfuscation of Hamilton’s politics.

No Accidental Coup

To understand how outrageous Chernow’s understanding of Hamilton is, we must go through a few key stories from Hamilton’s life. We should probably start with the Newburgh Conspiracy—Hamilton’s attempt to foment a military coup against the Continental Congress after the Revolution. In 1782 several men tried to organize an uprising against the Continental Congress. The key leader was Robert Morris, Congress’s superintendent of finance and one of Hamilton’s mentors. Morris was the wealthiest man in the country, and perhaps the most powerful financier America has ever known, with the possible exception of J. P. Morgan. His chief subordinate in the plot was a twenty-seven-year-old Hamilton, former aide-de-camp of George Washington and delegate to the Congress.

After the war, army officers, then camped out in Newburgh, New York, had not been paid for years of service. Morris and Hamilton saw in this financial-cum-political crisis an opportunity to structure a strong alliance between the military elite and wealthy investors. Military officers presented a petition to Congress for back pay. Congress tried to pass a tax to pay the soldiers, while also withholding payments owed to bondholders. Hamilton blocked this move. Indeed, according to Hogeland, “when a motion was raised to levy the impost only for the purpose of paying army officers, Hamilton shot it down: all bondholders must be included.” Meanwhile, Morris and Hamilton secretly encouraged General Horatio Gates at Newburgh to organize a mutiny. After unifying investors and the military elite, Morris and Hamilton calculated that the military officer corps would threaten Congress with force unless the Articles of Confederation were amended to allow full federal taxing power by federal officials. This coup attempt would then, they reasoned, force Congress to override state governments that were more democratic in their approach to political economy, and place aristocrats in charge.

According to Hogeland,

In Morris’s plan these taxes, collected not by weak state governments but by a cadre of powerful federal officers, would be earmarked for making hefty interest payments to wealthy financiers—including Morris himself, along with his friends and colleagues—who held millions of dollars in federal bonds, the blue-chip tier of domestic war debt.

The mutiny itself failed due to a public statement by George Washington opposing a military uprising. But in broader terms, the plot succeeded, once Washington promptly warned Congress about the unstable situation and urged that they take drastic action to centralize and federalize the structure of the American republic. Military officers received what would be the equivalent today of multi-million-dollar bonuses, paid largely in federal debt instruments. This effectively institutionalized the elite coalition that Morris and Hamilton sought to weaponize into a tool of destabilization. The newly unified creditors and military officers formed a powerful bloc of aristocratic power within the Congress that pushed hard to dramatically expand federal taxing power. This group “set up [Hamilton’s] career,” Hogeland writes, because by placing him in power over their asset base—a national debt—they would assure a steady stream of unearned income. Chernow obscures Hamilton’s participation in the mutiny, claiming in a rushed disclaimer to preserve his hero’s honor that Hamilton feared a military uprising—but he then proceeds to note that Hamilton “was playing with combustible forces” by attempting to recruit Washington to lead the coup. It’s a howling inconsistency bordering on falsification.

Snobs at the Falls

When Hamilton became Washington’s secretary of the treasury, he swiftly arranged the de facto payoff of the officer group at Newburgh, valuing their bonds at par and paying them the interest streams they wanted. Here was perhaps the clearest signal that the Federalist Party was structured as an alliance between bondholders and military elites, who would use a strong central government as a mechanism to extract money from the farming public. This was Hamiltonian statecraft, and it was modeled on the political system of the Whigs in Great Britain, the party of “monied interests” whose power was anchored by the Bank of England.

Chernow, a longtime Wall Street Journal financial writer, portrays Hamilton as a visionary financial genius who saw beyond the motley array of foolish yeoman farmers who supported his ideological foe Thomas Jefferson. In lieu of the static Jeffersonian vision of a yeoman’s republic, Chernow’s Hamilton is reputed to have created a dynamic, forward-looking national economy—though it’s more accurate to say that Hamilton was simply determined to shore up the enduring basis of a financial and industrial empire. Hillary Clinton even quoted the play paraphrasing Hamilton’s line, “They don’t have a plan—they just hate mine.” But in fact, there were competing modern visions of finance during the period, as Terry Bouton showed in Taming Democracy. And the one we have today—a public central bank, substantial government involvement in credit markets, paper money—has characteristics of both.

We should be grateful for Hamilton’s failures. Had he succeeded, we
would probably be living in a military dictatorship.

True to their own aristocratic instincts and affiliations, Hamilton and his mentor Morris wanted to insulate decision-making from democratic influence. Morris told Congress that redistributing wealth upward was essential so that the wealthy could acquire “those Funds which are necessary to the full Exercise of their Skill and Industry,” and thereby promote progress. While in office, Hamilton granted a group of proto-venture-capitalists monopoly control over all manufacturing in Paterson Falls, New Jersey, the site of some of the most powerful waterfalls on the East Coast. Hamilton, who captained this group of investors, thought it would power a network of factories he would then control. Among the prerogatives enjoyed by the funders of the Paterson Falls project was the authority to condemn lands and charge tolls, powers typically reserved to governments. More broadly, in the fight to establish a for-profit national bank owned and controlled by investors, he placed control over the currency in the hands of the wealthy, linking it to gold and putting private financiers in charge.

Morris and Hamilton sought, as much as possible, to shift sovereign powers traditionally reserved for governments into the hands of new chartered institutions—private corporations and banks—that would be strategically immunized from the democratic “disease.” These were not corporations or banks as we know them; they were quasi-governmental institutions with monopoly power. Jefferson sought to place an anti-monopoly provision in the Constitution precisely because of this well-understood link between monopoly finance and political power.

Chernow portrays this far-reaching debate over the future direction of America’s productive life as a byproduct of Hamilton’s unassailably noble attempt to have the federal government retire the Revolutionary War debt. This is simply false (and a very common lie, expressed with admiration by other prominent Hamilton fans like Alan Greenspan and Andrew Mellon). Hamilton wanted a large permanent debt; he wanted it financed so his backers could extract a steady income from the people by way of federal taxes. To pay off the debt would be to kill the goose laying the golden egg. By constricting the question of democracy to a question of accounting, Chernow misrepresents what was really at stake. It was a fight over democracy, authoritarianism, and political economy—and in many ways, the same one we’re having today.

The Gold Standard and the Iron Fist

In the 1780s and 1790s, Hamilton won this battle, and the effects were catastrophic. Interest rates shot up as a monopoly of finance gathered in the hands of the merchant class. The debt was owned by the wealthy, while ordinary farmers who had fought in the Revolution had to pay the tax in gold that they didn’t have. It was a heavily deflationary policy, and the era after the Revolution saw an economic contraction similar in size to that of the Great Depression, with a foreclosure crisis as severe. According to Bouton, “There were more Pennsylvanians who had property foreclosed by county sheriffs during the post-war decades than there were Pennsylvania soldiers who fought for the Continental Army.”

Protests broke out in the western parts of the country, similar to pre-Revolution-era revolts against the British, who, in extracting revenues for the Crown and its allies, were pursuing the same policies that Hamilton did. These protests were a response not to taxes, but to the specific tax structure Hamilton constructed. Western farmers, though not poor, had little access to cash, so they used whiskey as currency—a medium of exchange that farmers in many cases produced sporadically in backyard stills. Hamilton’s tax was a political attack on these farmers, whom he saw as his political opponents. The levy targeted whiskey because western farmers had converted this commodity into a competitive monetary system. The whiskey levy was also regressive, with a low rate on industrial distillers and a high rate for small farmers, with the goal of driving the farmers out of the whiskey business. Furthermore, Hamilton placed the collection authority for the tax in the hands of the wealthiest big distillers, who could then use it to drive their smaller competitors out of business. This was all intended not only to destroy the political power of small farmers, but to foment a rebellion that Hamilton could then raise an army to crush. And that’s just what happened.

In 1795, Washington and Hamilton raised more than ten thousand troops to march into Western Pennsylvania, the strongest redoubt of opposition to the new tax (known forever after as the Whiskey Rebellion). Washington, halfway through the march and perhaps doubting the wisdom of this use of military power, handed over command to Hamilton, and went home. Entrusted with executive power, Hamilton used indefinite detention, mass arrests, and round-ups; seized property (including food stores for the winter); and had soldiers administer loyalty oaths. He also attempted to collect testimony to use against his political enemies, such as William Findley and Albert Gallatin (who would later be Jefferson’s and Madison’s secretary of the treasury), which he “hoped to use,” as Hogeland writes, “to silence his political opponents by hanging them for treason.” This is the strong-armed tyranny that David Brooks (to take one among countless exemplars of latter-day Hamilton worship) celebrates when he says that Hamilton gave us “the fluid capital markets that are today the engine of world capitalism.” It is also, far from incidentally, what John Yoo cited as precedent when defending George W. Bush’s national security policies.

Similarly, Hamilton’s fights with John Adams in the late 1790s represented one of the most dangerous periods in American history, akin to the McCarthy era on steroids. The latter part of the French Revolution was as shocking to Americans of the early republic as the 1917 Russian Revolution was to their modern successors. It stoked the widespread fear among Federalists that any talk of democracy would lead to similar guillotine-style massacres; they began referring to Jefferson’s supporters as “Jacobins”—an epithet that was the 1790s equivalent of “terrorist” or “communist.” This was the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made criticism of the government a federal crime. But in addition, and more frighteningly, Hamilton constructed the only partisan army in American history (titled the “New Army”) and tried to place himself at the head of it. Only Federalists could be officers. He envisioned himself leading an expedition into Florida and then South America, and mused aloud about putting Virginia “to the test” militarily. Ultimately, Adams—perhaps the most unlikely savior of self-governance in the annals of our history—figured out what Hamilton was doing and blocked him from becoming a New World Napoleon. The New Army was disbanded, and our military established a tradition of nonpartisanship.

Another Near Miss

When Thomas Jefferson won the presidency, he described that year’s presidential election as the “Revolution of 1800,” precisely because it was proof that self-government could work. Unlike the succession from Washington to Adams, this was a change in party control, the first peaceful transfer of power in a republic in modern history. Most popular accounts of the hard-fought 1800 ballot focus on Hamilton’s relationship with John Adams, his endorsement of Jefferson, and the Burr-Jefferson soap opera—and how all of these personal intrigues culminated in an eventual tie among electors. In fact, this is so well known that liberals unhappy with the outcome of the 2016 election tried to convince members of the Electoral College to overturn Trump’s victory, and titled their project “Hamilton electors.”

But there’s a darker story of the 1800 deadlock. It involves the more extreme wing of the Federalist Party, which simply tried to have the election overturned, risking civil war to do so. Federalists were inflamed at a host of purported Republican outrages, including the party’s opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts and to the creation of the New Army. They also claimed the Republicans were sympathetic to France (with which we were then engaged in a post-Revolutionary “quasi-war”) and abetted domestic disturbances like the Whiskey Rebellion and a similar uprising a few years later known as the Fries’s Rebellion. In 1799, Federalists put forward “the Ross bill” to have the Senate effectively choose the next president by empowering a select committee to disallow electors. The bill was defeated by House members who didn’t want to delegate their authority to the Senate.

The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780s, both in its glorification of financial elites and its disdain for true economic democracy.

Then, after the election, Federalist allies in the lame duck session of Congress were considering, according to Jefferson, “a law for putting the government into the hands of an officer of their own choosing.” Jefferson threatened armed resistance, and both Pennsylvania and Virginia began military preparations. Ultimately, the Federalists backed down. As historian James Lewis pointed out, the election of 1800 produced a peaceful transition of power, but that was not necessarily a likely outcome.

Hamilton lost, but not without bequeathing to later American citizens a starkly stratified political economy. Bouton argues that the defeats of the middle class in the 1780s and 1790s narrowed democracy for everyone. As poor white men found the freedoms for which they fought undermined by a wealthy elite, they in turn “tried to narrow the concept to exclude others.” Much of the turn toward a more reactionary version of white supremacy in the early 1800s, in other words, can be laid at Hamilton’s feet. Later on, Hamilton’s financial elite were ardently in favor of slave power. Manhattan, not any Southern state, was the first political entity to follow South Carolina’s call for secession, because of the merchants’ financial and cultural ties to the slave oligarchy. In other words, Hamilton’s unjust oligarchy of money and aristocracy fomented a more unjust oligarchy of race. The aggrieved rites of ethnic, racial, and cultural exclusion evident in today’s Trump uprising would no doubt spark a shock of recognition among the foes of Hamilton’s plutocracy-in-the-making.

Rites of the Plutocrats

Hamilton had tremendous courage, insight, and brilliance. He is an important Founder, and not just because he structured early American finance. His life sheds light on some deep-rooted anti-democratic forces that have always existed in America, and in particular, on Wall Street. Much of the far-reaching contemporary Hamilton PR offensive is connected to the Gilder Lehman Institute, which is financed by bankers who back the right-wing Club for Growth and American Enterprise Institute (and support Hamilton’s beloved gold standard). Robert Rubin in 2004 started the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, which laid out the framework for the Obama administration’s financial policies. Chernow has made millions on books fawning over J. P. Morgan, the Warburg financial family, and John D. Rockefeller. And thanks largely to the runaway success of Hamilton the musical, Chernow is now, bizarrely, regarded as a court historian of American democracy in the mold of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

One of Hamilton’s biggest fans is Tim Geithner, the man who presided over the financial crisis and the gargantuan bank bailouts during the Obama presidency. In his 2014 memoir, Stress Test, Geithner wrote admiringly of Hamilton as the “original Mr. Bailout,” and said that “we were going to deploy federal resources in ways Hamilton never imagined, but given his advocacy for executive power and a strong financial system, I had to believe he would have approved.” He argues this was a financial policy decision. In doing so, he evades the pronounced anti-democratic impulses underlying the response to the financial crisis.

As economist Simon Johnson pointed out in a 2009 essay in The Atlantic titled “The Quiet Coup,” what the bailouts truly represented was the seizure of political power by a small group of American financiers. Just as in the founding era, we saw a massive foreclosure crisis and the evisceration of the main source of middle class wealth. A bailout, similar to one that created the national debt, ensured that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of a small group. The Citizens United decision and the ever-increasing importance of money in politics have strong parallels to the property disenfranchisement along class lines that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period. Just as turnout fell to record lows in much of the country in 2014, turnout collapsed after the rebellions were put down. And in another parallel, Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out across the country were evicted by armed guards—a martial response coordinated by banks, the federal government, and many Democratic mayors.

The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780s and 1790s, both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything resembling true economic democracy. The Obama political elite, in other words, celebrates Hamilton not in spite of Hamilton’s anti-democratic tendencies, but because of them.

Set in contrast to the actual life and career of its subject, the play Hamilton is a feat of political alchemy—as is the stunningly successful marketing campaign surrounding it. But our generation’s version of Hamilton adulation isn’t all that different from the version that took hold in the 1920s: it’s designed to subvert democracy by helping the professional class to associate the rise of finance with the greatness of America, instead of seeing in that financial infrastructure the seeds of a dangerous authoritarian tradition.

In 1925, Franklin Roosevelt asked whether there might yet be a Jefferson to lead the forces of democracy against Hamilton’s money power. Perhaps someone—maybe Elizabeth Warren, who pointed out on PBS that Hamilton was a plutocrat—is asking that question again. That said, Hamilton is a great musical. The songs are catchy. The lyrics are beautiful. But the agenda is hidden, because in America, no political leader, not even Donald Trump, can credibly come right out and pronounce democracy a bad thing and agitate for rule by big finance. And the reason for that is that Alexander Hamilton, despite his success in structuring Wall Street, lost the battle against American democracy. Thank God for that.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Two years ago I had a beautiful young woman tell me she loved my music and my raps reminded her of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

I don't think I've ever been so offended in my life -- almost wounded. Still, I smiled and thanked her. Some things are best kept to ourselves.

[SonicG]

There are worse rapper comparisons though:


https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/chris- ... 234646726/


Of course. I underwent neoliberal musical indoctrination long ago...



RiP Jack Sheldon...

[norton ash]

Two years ago I had a beautiful young woman tell me she loved my music and my raps reminded her of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

I don't think I've ever been so offended in my life -- almost wounded. Still, I smiled and thanked her. Some things are best kept to ourselves.

O foolish pride. You could have made her a mixtape!

[Cordelia]

Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:00 pm wrote:

Two years ago I had a beautiful young woman tell me she loved my music and my raps reminded her of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

I don't think I've ever been so offended in my life -- almost wounded. Still, I smiled and thanked her. Some things are best kept to ourselves.

Maybe you didn’t need to be too offended; she could just have a thing for Lin-Manuel Miranda. Reminded me of my much younger days, people (men mostly) sometimes told me I reminded them of different actresses. Once at a B&B, another guest--a handsome, younger guy—came over to me and said I reminded him of Julie Andrews. Ugh. But I smiled (demurely, I’m sure). Later I heard him ask the proprietress if she knew of a nearby church service he could attend and, because he was also clean-cut, I think Julie Andrews was his favorite actress and it wasn’t really about me at all. He liked wholesome Julie Andrews and projected her onto (hopefully) not-quite-so-wholesome me.




At least she didn’t say your rap reminded her of The Sound of Music, but still, if she had...