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I remember listening to a few tracks for an APUSH activity in class and rolling my eyes. Maybe it's cuz I thought the kids who liked it were annoying and thus therefore Hamilton by itself was loathsome and worthy only of my scorn. A few years later though, I read the biography of Hamilton and actually enjoyed it, still haven't listened to the full musical, though maybe I should.

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Mar 4Liked by coldhealing

good lord, i cannot believe hamilton’s 9 years old. i fell in love with it in 2015, at age 11, and some of my closest friends to this day are the friends i made because of our mutual love for hamilton. this is a very well-done analysis/diary/retrospective and i will be thinking about it for a while

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author

❤️ ty for reading. it's really special that Hamilton brought people together like that

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Mar 7Liked by coldhealing

I really enjoyed this piece and of course the goodwill and empathy you always write with.

While I don't think Miranda has any deep convictions for Wall Street, I think he can still be critiqued for using Hamilton's original ambition and, at least implicitly, re-writing it as justification for an oversimplified and rose-colored Wall Street as it exists today. My guess for how this comes about is that he had in mind a certain liberal audience when writing the play and ended up mirroring the liberal political framework, which simultaneously demands change, but also craves a reinforcement of order and regulation. Miranda recasting actors as different races, while also reinforcing Wall Street's institutional power finds the perfect balance of change/control that liberals find appealing.

While Wall Street certainly allows and inspires the American youth to create their own future, it also exerts a steady underlying, controlling pressure, making it much more difficult for a future Hamilton to create something new.

Very disappointed in the Drake quote however! Especially from someone who is a cultivator of culture. Much better options to choose from ("Came up that's all me/stay true that's all me/all me for real") or even Future ("Straight up out the gutter, never had shit/Now we got 90210 on our address").

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