History repeats itself, just like me
A playlist of life lessons from the 10-dollar founding father without a father
I know this will stun you, but today’s July 4, so you’d probably rather be celebrating or barbecuing or blowing your fingers off instead of reading my blog. But here we are.
How about we share a little music? You know, stuff about lust, blood lust, lust for money, lust for power, lust for vengeance …
America! They’re playing our song!
I’ll get to an abbreviated playlist from “Hamilton” in a minute, but first let’s review our declaration from four years ago, when Americans were still crazy from the plague. We’ve come a long way. Now we’re plagued by the crazies.
‘Hamilton’s’ role in our recovery
Amid the brilliance of “Hamilton,” it’s easy to overlook four seemingly ordinary words in the opening number: “We fought with him.”
There are testaments to life’s ambiguity in the opening number and “Satisfied,” powerful sentiments like “Immigrants, we get the job done,” “History has its eyes on you,” “I never liked the quiet before” and “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now,” and a heaping helping of Hamiltonian hubris in “Hurricane”:
And in the face of ignorance and resistance
I wrote financial systems into existence
And when my prayers to God were met with indifference
I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance
But the playlist’s first five songs are these next ones, which deserve more elaboration because what we see in them we might also see in ourselves.
(Shudder.)
“My Shot”
This offers the handwriting on the wall, not just in the parallels and ambiguity between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, but in how willing we are (or aren’t) to fight for our ideals. Here’s Burr:
Geniuses, lower your voices
You keep out of trouble and you double your choices
I'm with you, but the situation is fraught
You've got to be carefully taught
If you talk, you're gonna get shot
That dichotomy is pretty much America, today and forever. While Texas shouts “Remember the Alamo!” California deadpans, “Chill, dude.” And with conflict comes angst. Here’s Hamilton:
And if we win our independence?
Is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants?
Or will the blood we shed begin
An endless cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants?
In the 250 years since the Revolutionary War started, America has turned into a peace-loving nation, a utopia for people who abhor violence, domestically and globally, and embrace quality education, huddled masses and universal health care.
I need another shot.
“Wait For It”
This song and the next one belong mostly to Burr, whose patient approach isn’t working nearly as well as Hamilton’s bravado.
Hamilton doesn’t hesitate
He exhibits no restraint
He takes and he takes and he takes
And he keeps winning anyway
He changes the game
He plays and he raises the stakes
That sounds an awful lot like Donald Trump, doesn’t it?
If that makes you cringe, consider Burr’s words a little later in the song:
Life doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
He sings the same words about death.
“The Room Where It Happens”
As Hamilton manages to take a page out of Burr’s book — “Talk less, smile more” — Burr is frustrated that his own brand of political soft-serve vanilla isn’t leading to power and influence.
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens
He hears echoes of how Hamilton once chided him — “If you stand for nothing, then what’ll you fall for?” — because Hamilton could stir people’s passions in ways that Burr couldn’t, in ways the Democrats of today still can’t. If your leadership with 50 shades of vanilla can’t galvanize opposition to a man with 34 flavors of felonies and a myriad of morons, maybe your strategy needs work.
Madison is grappling with the fact
That not every issue can be settled by committee
Democrats: Do you see yourselves in this picture?
“The World Was Wide Enough”
Can we get out of politics? Please!
As Hamilton and Burr fire away in their infamous duel, we hear Hamilton’s thoughts:
What if this bullet is my legacy?
Legacy! What is a legacy?
It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
Trump, never known for his listening skills, is planting weeds in a garden he’ll never get to see.
Oops, sorry! No more politics. Promise.
After winning a duel that really had no winners, Burr eventually realized what people in so many tragedies never figure out: We get so caught up in our own drama that we never notice other potential solutions that might have changed our lives — or saved them.
We make mistakes. We rationalize many of them. But what if one bad day or week or month turns out to be your legacy? A lie? A punch? An affair?
Will your legacy be 34 felony convictions — or not having any convictions at all?
Now I'm the villain in your history
I was too young and blind to see
I should've known, I should've known
The world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”
I know this is a day of celebrating independence, but even the cynical among us (hello) know that we need to cherish our dependence on one another. For all his flaws, Hamilton changed lives on a grand scale, even after his death.
And when you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?
If you had people who changed your life — and you did — this isn’t the day to remember them or honor them. Every day is.
Lighting 7 candles in my soul
Today I’m embracing my Black Jewish Mexican side, which doesn’t exist in my demographics, but does in my soul.
Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, had the clout and longevity to do that on a grand scale, interviewing his former military comrades, getting more of his writings published, speaking out against slavery, raising funds for the Washington Monument.
That’s great for the Alexander Hamilton the politician, but she also honored the man — that “bastard, orphan son of a whore” that Burr kept singing about — by setting up the first private orphanage in New York City, then watching hundreds of children grow into better people than they ever would have been.
In their eyes I see you, Alexander
I see you every time
Murphy Slaw
Something old: This guy didn’t cite a source for this, but I’ve seen enough similar reports to believe it (and no, I don’t think 50 is old). Note: Alexander Hamilton was in his late 40s when Burr shot him. NOW do you feel better about turning 50? Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now, warts and all.
Something new: The New York Times surveyed experts and came out with this list of the best movies of the 21st century, with “Parasite” on top. Like any list of this kind, it’s both great and flawed.
It’s definitely intriguing, but its biggest wart to me is that it has people vote strictly for their top 10, so you get a lot of quirky films that appeal to audience segments, but skip over ones than have far broader appeal: “Frozen,” “Avengers: Endgame,” the Harry Potter finale (or at least one Potter film), even the filmed version of “Hamilton” connected with audiences far more than most of the movies on this list.
Something borrowed: This story has some good insight about people who cancel plans with friends, often at the last minute. In some relationships, it barely merits a shrug, but in others, it can be a deal breaker.
Something blue: In this letter to columnist Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post, a woman says that her boyfriend of six months wants her to dump her male lifelong best friend, certain that something romantic or sexual is going on between them.
“Last week, this came to a head when my boyfriend saw me texting my friend and grabbed my phone and refused to give it back until he had read all the texts — and when he saw they were perfectly innocent, he still wouldn’t drop it.”
Hax, her readers and I and in unanimous agreement: Dump the boyfriend. Now.
another good one, thanks Dave!