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I love you so much Alexander. I wanted to click away but I could not stop watching I am having such a fantastic time! You're excellent, your videos have gotten so much more compelling over the years! Great job!
Axiom: "We should increase the wellbeing and decrease the suffering for the most about of living organisms possible, to the best of our autonomous ability." There, solved your whole video😎
from the creator of "are they gay alexander hamilton and john laurens" comes a nuanced intellectual discussion about the culture of american liberalism
@@staleravioli9619not enough. Get the ukulele, interpretive dance, dj set, dog, jeffree stars golden couch, and all white clothing and then maybe we will forgive eyou
As someone who was pretty libbed up about Hamilton, there is one moment in time I find myself thinking about a lot. Miranda hosted SNL in October of 2016, the day after the Trump/Billy Bush tape released. For the monologue, he did a parody of My Shot where at one point he calls Trump a piece of shit and then jumps into “well he’s never gonna be president now, never gonna be president now,” and that shit haunts me. Like of course he made that joke because to so many, it seemed impossible that someone caught on tape saying “grab them by the pussy” could ever get elected president. Regardless, it’s one of countless examples from that time of Liberal arrogance and unyielding trust in political civility that helped Trump win. For me, and I imagine others, Hamilton felt like a symbol of progress, but in reality it was a fundamental misunderstanding of what America Now actually is (songs still bop though and It’s Quiet Uptown makes me cry)
I think the funny thing about that moment is that it's sort of ended up aging like fine wine when he did actually lose. That's it, I feel like what America is and how it relates to Hamilton is always going to be an ever-changing thing. I think Trump won because he managed to (like the video stated) pander to a demographic of people who at that point felt like they were the least common denominator.
💯, particularly how good the songs are, regardless of all the asterisks they have. I also get teary-eyed with One Last Time (I ugly cry with It's Quiet Uptown).
@@desdar100 Exactly. And he was able to manipulate issues of class by projecting the Demcrats as everything that is wrong with American politics in its _entirety_. So many leftists talk about working class revolution but can’t even address the half of the electorate that are ready to vote in potentially authoritarian policies.
1:05:57 It's an Ursula K le Guin quote but rephrased worse by other people: "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
The issue with that thinking is that it’s a false equivalency. Historically, only kings benefitted from the divine right of kings. A lot more people across the economic spectrum benefit (or at least believe they benefit) from capitalism. That interconnectedness makes it a lot harder to topple without massively destroy a lot of peoples’ quality of life.
strangeaeons has a great video called something like "the insane scandal of tumblr's hivliving" though it's more just a historical/documentary overview of the tumblr discourse lol. good to tide us over until we get alexander's video essay 🙏
I have IMMENSE respect for the decision to place a mid roll ad break right after the line “every day we see hundreds of advertisers trying to sell us their version of a grand story” That resolute meme of capital, the mid-roll, ad has been bent into meaning by your essay, very impressive
Wow. On the off-chance that you read this comment, thank you for speaking to the truth I have been trying to articulate. I am a leftist teacher in a red state constantly battling my own inner demons of ideology and philosophy as I look out the window and watch the world burn around me. It's so easy to become a jaded "revolutionary" leftist and ho-hum about how change will never happen in our insane neoliberal surveillance state. I can't say I don't still think a revolution would best benefit all free people in this country, but I also can't armchair philosophize any longer without driving myself insane. There's a line I have to walk to keep my job and pursue my career, which I am extremely passionate about. There's also a whole lot of work to be done out there in the meantime. Thank you for articulating that there isn't only two options available for leftists these days, that we aren't doomed to either be ineffective but disgruntled cogs or flamed out revolutionaries, that small action makes material differences in people's lives regardless of how dire the situation may seem. I admire your optimism and I'm not sure I share it, but that doesn't mean I can't use my own material resources to try to make someone else's situation better. Thank you, really. I'm going to go fight to become my school's new union rep after our old one left.
I hear this completely, and becoming a union rep is a badass step toward creating change. Leftists building power within unions and using the economic leverage they have to make bigger demands and disrupt the economic and political order until those demands are met is a way to turn small, individual actions into large, collective action. I think we can also support each other through a diversity of tactics--we can cheer for anarchist mutual aid collectives attempting to build parallel structures of community care as alternatives to the state, cheer for members of the Uncommitted Movement strategically withholding their votes to attempt to pressure the federal government to change course on Palestine, and cheer for democratic socialists running electoral campaigns for leftists in local government. We can be critical of each other and push each other to be better and still come together in community to fight for a better world on a local, national, and international stage!
"I can't say I don't still think a revolution would best benefit all free people in this country..." What about retirees who are dependent on social security checks to buy groceries? What about people on disability? Medicaid? People who are dependent on any government program? Yes, these programs are very flawed but there are still some people who are on them and who need them. Revolutions are messy and chaotic. If you destroy the system, do you have a plan immediately ensure that those who were dependent on that system will not starve? If your revolution is from without, it cannot possibly help everyone. Somebody will get hurt.
@@ferlessleedr All valid points. I have elderly parents who live off of social security checks, and my father is on VA insurance, so it is on my mind quite frequently. I also have a grandfather who has been living comfortably off of his union-negotiated pension for decades. He inspires me every day. Always my biggest cheerleader for unionizing. The above comment addresses the idea of setting up mutual aid funds and resources apart from the government to aid folks that need it. And an anarcho-leftist who is a close friend of mine has a similar vision. I'm not a visionary and would never position myself as a political leader, just someone who is trying to reason through the violent and harmful system we have and imagine a brighter future. I don't claim to have answers, just a sincere desire to see right done by all free people and not just those naturally gifted a position of power and capital. Thanks for the warranted criticism--I see your point and it's a factor in my political beliefs and values.
@ferlessleedr I would think that a revolution includes MORE programs and coverage to support people through life. Numbers wise, there's plenty of room in the war & sex trade budget for that. Where on earth did humans get the notion that revolutions absolutely have to be violent and unpleasant? I feel like shame over moderated pleasure and feeling good is what's holding us back from a proper, root cause targeted revolution. I think a lot of humans are convinced they know everything about life, and that life has to overall feel bad. A revolution where the people are cared for SHOULD include services to support them. People of all types need care and resources - idk how much further I can explain that one. Everyone is dependent on the system somehow. That's why it's so hard to dismantle.
😂😂😂The educational system exists to form worker bees that will reproduce the capitalist economic system. The left needs to create a pipeline system like the alt-right pipeline that is not liberal (Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube). Crowder, Shapiro, and Prager influence people in the real world.
I think the Hamilton musical and its reception kind of encapsulates why I decided to major in American Studies - the myth and the reality of America, and how people are trying to navigate the two. Always found that super fascinating
this is such a succinct way to describe why I decided, as a history major, to specialize in American history and plan to get a masters in American studies.
All of history is mythology. When we talk about the French Revolution, we talk about Robespierre, Marie-Antoinette, and Napoleon. About the Bolshevik Revolution, the Tsar, Lenin, and Stalin. No one cares about John Doe. There will be no sudden awakening by the masses by shining a light on John Doe’s life in revolutionary America. Leftists alienate the average proletarian by being as provocative as possible instead of speaking to their needs.
As a foreigner living in America but fascinated by its history, this is why I read American classics. I really feel like no other country in the world lives in the middle, the fantasy of the past and future, with the cruel reality of the present.
I disagree. The placement of slavery as a given would be a problem but you need to genuinely show who willingly puts the boot down and why. "Molasses to Rum to Slaves" is a good starting place but 1776 is both a different time and a different show. So why is it a given in 1789? Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe... and Adams. Ah, the confirmed anti-slavery Adams is both Hamiltons' punching bag, that might be connected.
@@tskmaster3837but this Hamilton wasn’t about that aspect of his life and American history. Trying to encompass as much as possible would muddle the story the author wanted to tell. There’s absolutely room for media examining other aspects of Hamilton and the founding fathers in general, like slavery. I think it’s necessary, even, but it doesn’t all need to be in one piece of media. Bringing slavery into this Hamilton would completely derail the story and pull the audience out of it, because if you directly acknowledge that slavery is a part of the story, you have to follow through. You can’t just drop in a massive subject like that: it either becomes an integral part of the story or else it appears disingenuous. But if you make it an integral part of the story, it clashes with all the pieces that make Hamilton distinct.
Honestly, I feel as if, if slavery was included in Hamilton, depending on how it was done(Cause yeah, good points are made here about it needing to be integral to the story...)it could've been a better piece of art. If the musical is about "the story of America then told by America now" going off of how slavery would "break" Hamilton, that's perfect. As the musical itself delivers more of the essence of the principles that America founded itself on in a dramatized/ideal way, chronicling the journey of an immigrant coming with nothing, pulling himself up by his bootstraps and the support of the free people,rightfully placing himself in the upper echelons of society.... (A chronicle many still champion for all citizens of the US( immigrant or not) slavery and various other tragedies of the past are shattering realities that reasonably breaks it all down. And that's perfect for the sentiments of hamiltons mission. (The diversity of the acting cast makes it even more ideal!) There are people now(marginalized groups and minorites alongside the majority) who don't take the past seriously and continue to harm their own communities, people who downplay or don't want to look at America's gritty history, and instead look to areas of society (wealthy/powerful,considerable more "respectable") they hope to be in, completely ignoring the issues that may keep them from it. (Or why wanting to be in those spaces is bad ) If Hamilton faced that head on, it wouldn't break Hamilton(in my opinion), it'd break the facade of a perfect country some seem to continue to believe we live in, and shift the tone of the play from the essence of americas core patriotism and pride to the reality of the (miseducation/misinformation/ hatred/mistreatment/and pain that does ruin that for everyone already.
Oh wow. This just reminded me that your Are They Gay Laurens and Hamilton video was literally the first ever thing I saw on your channel. My life has finally come full circle.
found it. it's titled “I Need You to Pretend to Date Me” Tracing Fanwork from Source to its Furthest Extreme, written by peter egger and is avaliable to download as pdf on the mcgill university (montreal, canada). it also has sections about the fandoms of other popular musicals, not only hamilton
You know what? I still have no idea of what to do but you made me realize that I have a really avoidant personality and that all the times I've tried political activism I've ended up abandoning it because of conflict or because I don't see any change and I get disappointed. I've never even thought about powering through, about accepting there's gonna be differences and try to work it out or accept that my contribution it's gonna be small and probably barely noticeable. So thank you so much ❤
I am an English teacher in Créteil France. We studied the musical in class. My kids were excited and went on Wikipedia to get more info. I remember one who told me, ma’am it sucks! There is nobody black in the story… I cackled.
The thing is that's the musical has never really left. In fact, everything's a rounding this Biden and Trump stuff is playing at exactly like the plot of it
Honestly, I wonder why we think this is progress. This is just another turn of the wheel of “absolute good versus absolute evil” show that has been playing ever since the 1980s in federal politics. Let me know when the wheel breaks and then I will care about politics more than a sigh and a shuffle to throw away my vote no matter who I vote.
been searching for long videos to watch to keep me busy as i recover from top surgery. now i know what im doing for the foreseeable future. youve done it again
Part of me hopes we see Lin turn around 7-10 years hence to make another stage musical after having had time to percolate and move left. Of course he would have made his money by then, but I can acknowledge how that feels while understanding his voice to be powerful and his position capable of influence for the common good... Maybe the PROMESA thing broke his heart enough to radicalize him against the system. As a third-gen PR immigrant myself, I hope he takes it as an opportunity to turn against the status quo that betrayed him - that betrayed all our families, on the island and in the diaspora. I hope he turns to the work. I value his presence. We all need to learn things. Keep trying, Lin. Keep trying.
I mean its valid, but if he gets more radicalized left due , you know or at least a kamala play, not to worhip or glorify her but becaus eshe probably deserves it.
i’ve been watching you for about 2 years and every video you just manage to get even better. like not be earnest on main but you take some really dense topics and connect it holistically to history and current events and make it so digestible that it’s insane. genuinely can’t thank u enough for putting so much thought and effort into these videos!!
Love your talk about us "all being transgender." I'm always vocal about cis dysphoria and gender as a performance. It has a the same flavor of @FDsignifier pointing out "white men" as a demographic with genuine greviances and deserving of sympathy and specific care rather then seeing them as "default" like the system does and therefore considering them undeserving of examination in left spaces. That "default" is not a benefit. It is a harm.
People who want to police transgender bodies, just want to police genders. Look at what Elon Musk and JK Rowlings did to the female boxer, Imane Khelif. Am I feminine enough for Miss Rowling to consider me cisgender? Is it ok to discriminate against me for my masculine dress and hobbies if you label me a man with breast? Cis or trans, if we don’t fit in a box, we all run the risk of being misgendered now.
This is why I think Hamilton has always felt different to me since I got to it during the Trump era. I never saw Hamilton as this great man but a deeply flawed character who did some pretty substantial things surrounded by those same sorts of actors. Daveed Diggs and Christoper Jackson said they struggled to preform their roles just because they were glorifying these men who proudly and unashamedly owned human beings who looked like them but also saw that they did some truly amazing things as well. And for me it’s the lines “If we win our independence, is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants? or will the blood be shed begin an endless cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants” and “America, you great unfinished Symphony” at the end of the musical that always felt like that was the main message of the story. That America is an experiment with some deeply rooted contradictions and that must be rectified before it crumbles under its own strength. Which I think is a much more beautiful message. A story of triumph, failure, the human condition and overall the legacy you leave behind. And watching this I am honestly happy I got to Hamilton during the Trump Admin because to have seen Hamilton as anything but a demonstration of the triumphs and failure of man I’d probably have just appreciated the songs more, and less the story itself.
Yeah a lot of people are trying to claim that the musical isn't relevant anymore, but I firmly disagree. I don't think it was glorifying the characters, nor was it demonizing them. It was showing them as complex human beings who share a lot of similarities to us in the modern day. To really wrestle with that requires a lot of nuance and self-reflection though, which I don't think internet spaces are well suited for
It’s not that complicated to see why Trump won. Here’s a quote from his RNC acceptance speech: “We are often told that being an American is about being dedicated to a collection of abstractions and buzzwords: democracy…freedom…tolerance….multiculturalism…But a nation based on "freedom" is just another place to go shopping. It's a country for everyone…and thus a country for no one…it's a country in which we ourselves have become strangers. Man doesn't live, and man doesn't die, for abstractions like "freedom." Man lives and dies for a homeland…for a people and its future…for beauty…for the power of being part of something bigger than one's self…”
I kinda thought George Washington would hate the idea of being portrayed by a black man, and the audience knowing that is an important part of the story telling 🤷♀️ “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story…” Your story is ours now, Mr. Washington because, well, you’re dead
@@aesop1451 Good point. The silent part is that the working class wont die for Trump in the battlefield unless he gives them a homeland to pretend to own
2:15:20 "vote in your local election... because it's the difference between people like me getting healthcare or not" THIS SO MUCH, especially in the primaries! Billionaires are catching up and pumping money into local primaries because they know it's important.
I knew just about memes and little bits of songs and them I see Lin-Manuel Miranda and I'm like... wait... I know this guy... (he played Alvie in House MD)
I think I need to hang the last 5 minutes of this video in a frame on my wall, tattoo it into my brain, and turn it into my daily affirmation; this essay encompasses all the complicated feelings I have about America, liberalism, leftism, online activism, and the failures of all 4 over the past decade in a way I was never able to articulate. Thank you so much for making this, genuinely, from the bottom of my soul.
Canadian here. I'm not living in a 1:1 version of your world but I know things are similar over here. I'm of a similar mind-it's our duty to put in the work here and now. I love how this video went all kinds of everywhere but it feels genuinely cohesive and put together. I also adore your call to action. Great stuff.
Post-modernism is really, really good, at analyzing structures and offering solutions that boil down to tearing everything down. Some post-modernists even put forward a "back to nature" idea that feels very Rousseau. And to be clear, maybe we should tear down most of the structures that form society. But children still have to go to school, and old people still need their walkers, and you need to eat, and eating requires a society. While we're tearing it all down, we also have to use the rubble to make something new. And that act of imagining, of picturing and hoping for something better than what exists now for everyone, is what you have to believe in. to put it in hamilton terms "Every action's an act of creation, I'm laughin' in the face of casualties and sorrow, For the first time, I'm thinkin' past tomorrow." That's as close to truth as I think we'll ever get if you're looking for meaning in political philosophy. You gotta get past critique and start making something new, on the micro level and the macro. To make something new, you need connections, a social group to fight for and with and to create with. People you love. People the people you love, love. I'm an atheist, but if you accept that god is a form of The capital-T Truth or vice versa, then to quote another musical about a different revolution, "to love another person is to see the face of god."
I really think the next enlightenment is going to be a religious one. Atheism and secularism pave the way for an ultramodernist world where nothing is sacred and so anything can be commodified. And I don't mean religious in the theocratic sense either, since all the dogmatic churches have bent down to capital just as easily, but a real spiritualism like in the above comment. Some shit in life matters more than any value counter, and more people need to live this and not just cliche it.
You perfectly encapsulated how leftist thought and never ending doomerism with no solutions actually made me apolitical but the imagining keeps me back and informed. Not the wokescolding and critique with no action that’s excused under “surviving under capitalism” of which characterises a lack of building that of which was necessary to re examine. Deconstruction only works with reconstruction
The talk about ‘human’ being defined by structures of power vividly reminded me of an elder I met once at a big trans conference, who was telling me about how back in the day if police got involved when trans folks were harassed/beaten/etc, many times these incidents would be downplayed and reported as ‘no human involved’. That has always stuck with me. Everything is connected.
I thought that point was the most brain dead take I’ve ever heard. No one had a concept of what a human was until the enlightenment? It sounds like it’s compelling when you say it out loud but when you think about it for 2 seconds it’s obviously completely nonsensical
1:31 "For the first time in 180 years" I understand that this is more of a rethorical tool but cmon the revolutions of 1830 1848 and the Paris commune surely brought France face to face with its revolutionary fervour a little sooner than 1968
Yeah, I'm really not sure what that's supposed to mean. I remember that during the Toulouse unrests newsmedia were bringing up the fact that France is on the brink of or in the middle of a revolution pretty much all the time. Three monarchies, two empires and five republics.
i was so sucked into the video that i was literally jumpscared by those clips of lin manuel miranda rapping during what looks like a college commencement ceremony and now i can’t stop laughing, help i’m dying and i can’t get up
When Hamilton came out the only other show at the time that notably had Black actors was The Lion King. While I appreciate the huge leap made in diverse casting that came post-Hamilton, I've always found making Black actors choose between playing animals and playing slave owners difficult to swallow down as "progressive"
@@shedshow1439 that they're long-standing shows that intentionally had predominantly Black casts (and made the casting a large part of their advertising too). Dreamgirls, Hairspray, and The Color Purple similarly center around Black casts, they just weren't absolutely dominating Broadway in the same way that Hamilton and Lion King (and Book of Mormon) were at the time. Being a notably "Black" show isn't itself a negative, but historically roles for Black actors haven't been terribly nuanced. Thankfully that's been changing, and, to give credit where it's due, Hamilton accelerated that process.
You reminded me of how incredible it is that Hamilton successfully made blacks play white slaveowners and embrace themselves as part of *the slaveowners'* history.
Alex: "Everyday we see hundreds of advertisements trying to sell us their version of a grand story-" TH-cam at that exact moment: "Here's an ad" Me: "coincidence or irony?"
Your ability to clearly articulate a complex thesis and keep the thread engaging and digestible for the duration of a video like this is truly commendable. Great work, very thought provoking
Really liked the last half hour-ish of the video with your conclusions, especially the part about trying to find the universal struggle and truth behind issues like how trans-rights relates to how notions of gender can hurt us all
Yeah I really liked it too. I've seen some socialists/leftists try to argue that we should ignore identity politics altogether and focus on class struggle. And it always struck me as such a privileged and out-of-touch take But I like Alex's idea of "don't ignore identity issues to prioritize the larger fight, realize that they're all the same fight"
@@RobinRaye-np3vw Intersectionality has never fought and won a revolution that changed the entire society. Remember, the economic base shapes and maintains the superstructure. The fact that neoliberal politicians and big businesses support LGBTQ supports the possibility that these movements are not the vehicle for radical change. But Marxism-Leninism gets demonized everyday by all sides.
What perplexes me the most about postmodernist desconstruction of truth is how often it stops right before reaching a grounding realisation. Like, why obsess about not having one ultimate perfect truth and thinking that the alternative is the void? I am a STEM researcher. There is no "true" definition of, for example, species. We use different definitions for different situations and argue about the edge cases. It's still an extremely useful concept used for "hard" science. I feel like your conclusion, especially, would be served by the realisation that multiple truths is a good thing, actually. It's a reflection of the fundamental need for both democracy and conflict. As you sort of implied, a society without conflict is most likely a society without freedom.
@@8is It's literally impossible to have a society without conflict unless you enact dystopian levels of control. Which is fundamentally the opposite of freedom. The point of freedom is that people will disagree, and that will lead to conflict as long as we're living in a society and interacting with others.
"You think people make choices? No, people THINK they make choices. They think they're gonna steer right, or steer left... but they didn't build the roads." -Mr. Moses, The Unsleeping City If you enjoyed this video, I sincerely think you should check out Dimension 20's "The Unsleeping City". The American Dream and all it entails is a core theme and the section here about what freedom even IS and the categories that are enforced and deemed normal in order to exert control over the "abnormal" made me think of that quote
External circumstances may restrict the range of options available to us in any given situation, but that doesn't mean we don't have the freedom to choose within the context of those restrictions. For example, a maze may have a predetermined layout, but how I navigate that layout is based on my own decisions and internal reasoning.
this is cool and all but how does this information help anyone live confidently or maintain a meaningful sense of agency? i know it's about being "real" but this kind of sentiment makes it sound like people should just stop trying to live as if the rest of the world will live their life for them without their input which doesn't really make sense. if we had no influence over our own lives in face of external pressures then we wouldn't be people; the roads have been there from the beginning, the point we're at now is a direct result of the direction the people before us took. it's naive to believe anyone before us had some form of limitless freedom in constructing the institutions that restrict ours today, or that we are not also a form of nature in our own right shaping itself by having the capacity to act. i mean i understand the intellectual and philosophical appeal of a deterministic outlook like this i just don't understand the overall political practicality of leaning so heavily into this pattern of thought. maybe i'm not interpreting the quote correctly?
This is perhaps the best video essay I’ve seen in years. It masterfully touches on so many areas of politics, philosophy, doomerism, and leftist infighting. As a Hamilton fan I’ve grown appreciation for Miranda’s work, and as a leftist, I feel inspired to get involved in local politics. Easiest like & subscribe of my life
also as a fellow sociology person let me say nothing was ever more radicalizing to me as a leftist as the maps of crime rates, poverty, and racial segregation that still happens here. And I went to college in the 00s
Same, I'm not even a sociologist I'm a geologist. One lab I had introduced us to GIS using maps literally identical to the income map shown in the video, I wouldn't be surprised if that's where he found it. I believe the location we looked at in particular was Philidelphia. The assignment's focus was on noticing the correlation of income with locations of bike stations, bus stops, universities, etc. Not as jarring as the segregation maps but it definitely spurred me to look further into stuff like that. The closest major city to me is Detroit and that map is NOT pretty
im a teenager, this is the most eye opening video essay I've ever watched frame to frame. I've never felt more empowered as someone who can make a change. Problem is I struggle to see how I can get my hands in the movement as a teenager. Does anyone have any tips? I also live in BC and the resources I've seen are mostly from the U.S. Im tired of engaging in meaningless internet discourse that forces me to stew in the shittiness of it all, this video helped me realize I can do so much more to help people, and as corny as it sounds help the world. Any direction would be great.
Eric Liu's short video on civics/social power: th-cam.com/video/c_Eutci7ack/w-d-xo.html What do you care about? What do you notice can change for the better? It can be a seemingly small thing like biodegradable garbage segregation (that only some neighborhoods in my city have a policy about so it all goes to the same landfill anyway-but widespread policies on that can lay an infrastructure for when recycling plants do get implemented), or letter-writing campaigns to local government representatives to encourage when they follow through with a good policy (such as drawing a hardline on developing urban sprawl into protected rainforests). As a teenager, you can start a school club about your concerns, or contribute articles to your school newspaper, or join the student council if you want to practice by shaping school policy. You can start small and concrete, it doesn't have to be like a teenaged crusade to lower the minimum required voting age that gets passed tomorrow. Lower voting age would be great everywhere, but I think that's connected to too many youth emancipation conditions like financial literacy and functional emancipation from whatever in loco parentis policies are put on the information that you are working with. So if you can't vote now, there's still other simpler and more effective things that you can do. You don't have to solve absolutely everything wrong with the world all the time by tomorrow. You can choose one small thing. You can even decide this is the era of your life that you're going to read more on the causes that interest you, instead of getting kettled at protests and discovering later that you needed a permit to do that or something. Or you can do both at a 70/30 division of your free time-I don't know your life!
Sleeping is doing something! Like honestly, getting enough sleep is probably one of the most consistently helpful things we can do to act on change. I notice how much more effective and proactive I can be when I'm not sleep-deprived.
Very minor correction, Paris had dealt with multiple revolutions since the 1790s and the ushering in of the fourth republic was actually 98 years after the Paris commune so “for the first time since it’s founding revolution” is a bit inaccurate but obv who cares
Hey Alex, I've been watching your channel for a little over two years now, and I think this far and away your best video. From your analysis to the editing and art styles to humor...everything is just...so good. I hope you're relatively post-hole now! Also: I recommend reading more anarchists. Prefigurative anarchy on a community to community level is a solution-framework that balances positive-right liberalism and socialist communalism within the confines of the super structure above. Essentially: practice a politics of harmonious mutualism in your backyard to insulate you and your community from the inevitable cycles of capital and the rise and fall of populist totalitarians or neoliberal apathy.
That's an interesting concept. I normally dislike anarchist ideas because I'll see people talking about forming anarchist nations and the whole thing sounds so detached from reality to me, and I can almost instantly identify problems with their conceptualizations But a smaller, local anarchist group coming together to support and protect one another as a way of mitigating the impacts of a broad uncaring state? . . . That could work I'm arguably already participating in some version of that just by being an active member in my local queer community. Very interesting
@@RobinRaye-np3vw I totally get the general apprehension about anarchy. I was very skeptical until I started reading political theory. If you'd like to learn more and not be deep in the weeds of a writer like Kropotkin or Bakunin, I'd highly recommend anarchist analysis from "Andrewism" on TH-cam and the idea of "library socialism" from the "Srsly Wrong" podcast (a bit more pragmatic praxis). I will say...any purported anarchist arguing in favor of a "nation" likely doesn't understand the function of anarchy. Anarchy is the gradual building of community, consensus, mutualism, and transformative justice within a small to medium-sized community such that hierarchy of any kind is rendered impossible or, if necessary, tightly reigned in by virtue of distributing power somehow (for instance, in the case of an industrial bicycle facility in competitive anarcho-syndicalism the amount a higher ranking job in an industrial plant earns is capped at a number arrived at by consensus of the workers of the bike company). The whole idea of anarchist organization balks at the idea that any group needs a leader or structural ideology and that it is possible to organize ourselves in productive ways without the threat of violence from above or toward each other. It is a synthesis of radical hope and optimism in our fellow human beings, direct efforts to build horizontal power via self-sufficiency, and detaching ourselves from the idea of ownership as much as we can. All of this can occur as "prefigurative politics" in the current world. Essentially, we can practice this style of politicking every day even if we are forced to live under the remnants of neoliberal capitalism, likely currently shifting into "technofeudalism." We can build, in microscale, whatever we have the capacity to imagine. Queer spaces are an excellent ground for experimentation in this effort.
there is this clip of Lin Manuel Miranda at SNL where he stops walking in a hallway when he sees a picture of trump and starts to sing "well he's never gonna be president now" from Hamilton after some scandal came out, and then he became president anyway. That video always feels like a key moment in the shift of the optimism of this era for me
This is such a reassuring and hopeful video in ways that I could not have expected- incredibly grounded leftist analysis and call to action. I spend a lot of time bouncing between online "leftist" spaces, a well meaning but intensely liberal postmodern institution of employment, and some local leftist organizations when I'm able to access them. All of these people are well meaning and all of them are variously frustrating to work with, but over time I have grown increasingly exhausted of the paralytic performativity and shaming of online movements and the absolute unwillingness of the specific onsessed institution to allow connections to be drawn and universalities to be located. Both can feel so intensely hopeless, at their worst boxing down groups to their smallest and most isolated parts in the pursuit of understanding and creating a view of the world where the oppressed have no allies in the world and are incapable of seeking understanding with one another. I do not like many people in my local orgs, but the reminder of focused material action is a powerful antidote to that sense of powerlessness. I know I have a long way to go in the field of Doing Something, but this has been a powerful reminder of why it's worth putting in the work to go farther, even if it will never be flawless and even if it's only something small. So thank you for that.
If you further investigate Marx, you'll get some answers for why liberalism can be revolutionarily progressive (in some respects) at one point in history but end up being reactionary later on. Liberalism was not revolutionary because it represented some eternal truth and goodness that drove people to fight for it (though we should also remember liberalism was more the philosophy of the revolts' leadership, its beneficiaries), liberalism was revolutionary because it outlined a system of ideas that, relative to those of feudalism and absolute monarchy, were progressive in a way that was expedient to the emergent power of the proto-bourgeoisie. This created a new edifice that society is now struggling to break through.
I felt like I was in a dream world with how I could not get in to even the idea of Hamilton but everyone around me seemed to not be able to shut up about it.
Hamilton is definitely not without its flaws that I believe distort history but I actually got to be one of the first people to ever see it live while it was still off broadway and it was a once in a lifetime experience. The version we saw had much more dialogue between songs and went on for a super long time but it was something truly breathtaking and a work of passion in its earliest days. I’m not even a huge fan of Hamilton, probably haven’t listened to it in years but I was 13 and the time and I remember crying huge tears when hamilton’s son died in the play. All the actors except for Jonathan Groff came out at the end and we got to chit chat and take pictures with Lin Manuel Miranda, super early in his career, and he was telling us how the show was about to go to broadway. Hamilton has some moments that deeply misunderstand history and culture, but I still don’t think that writes off its important cultural impact. It was a cultural landmark that in my opinion marked a changing world at the time in 2016 and I think will be remembered as the end of that 2010-2016 era, the only problem is I also think it also contributed to a mythical distortion of the founding fathers historg
I've been thinking for a while now about how Hamilton was the last gasp of artistic political idealism, the second 2016 happened it became impossible for future generations to even remotely tap into where that show was coming from. Looking at it now feels like looking at a fossil and it's not even ten years old. It had blinders on about a lot of things in the same way a loooot of Americans did but there's still solid fundamentals there (and a fundamentally good, if entirely fictional, story) which makes the whole thing sadder. On the flip side, Hadestown turned out to be freakishly prescient. Needless to say I am SEATED for this, thank you Alex.
@@TuesdaysArt it swept the 2016 Tony Awards, but that doesn't mean the show wasn't drumming up a fandom the year before and in the months leading up to that; "the second 2016 happened" was in like...November, not January of that year, so I think it's not so strange to recognize that the 2016 vibe actually was that. The entirety of the 70th Annual Tony Awards is an interesting capture of what the mood was because nobody knew what was about to happen on a government level.
I think Hamilton will always be relevant just because it's tied to America and how we view it changes almost every single year. Even today, with Biden stepping down sort of calls back to the song One Last Time and the idea of legacy and what that means for anybody going forward
A quote from Zizek’s substack on why Trump won: “It’s not that complicated to see why Trump won. Here’s a quote from his RNC acceptance speech: “We are often told that being an American is about being dedicated to a collection of abstractions and buzzwords: democracy…freedom…tolerance….multiculturalism…But a nation based on "freedom" is just another place to go shopping. It's a country for everyone…and thus a country for no one…it's a country in which we ourselves have become strangers. Man doesn't live, and man doesn't die, for abstractions like "freedom." Man lives and dies for a homeland…for a people and its future…for beauty…for the power of being part of something bigger than one's self…”
I got halfway through this video when my partner came home from work last night. I guess like many, I became disenchanted with Hamilton as the world turned uglier, or maybe I just became more educated on the ugliness that has always been here & some of its root causes which this play glosses over or even glorifies. But as I'm listening to Hamilton again, I'm caring for the 5-month-old son I had with a man who was orphaned as a child. Who left everything he knew to walk thousands of miles in search of a better life, than what he'd suffered under a dictator backed by France for several decades and counting, on a new continent and survived horrors beyond most of our comprehension in doing so. A man who is a prodigious and gifted songwriter in several different languages despite only having had access to 7 years of formal education. And will possibly never receive the opportunity to realise his potential thanks to the traumas and limitations inflicted by the ideology Hamilton espouses. It sure hits different. If only LMM had put those skills to use writing a musical about someone like Sankara. But who am I kidding? That never would have made it to Broadway
I just got back into nostalgically listening to Hamilton recently and have been thinking a lot about it’s politics and it’s place in the time it came out. Really excited to see your take!
Not all the way thru the video but I know I will have an interesting time and look forward to it. What I wanted to say right off the bat is your film making skills are really really really great. I wish I could be more articulate. I enjoy the variety of sets with the thematic through-line, your delivery, and attention to detail. The visual theme of this visual seems to be very 70s inspired, perhaps 60s. I'm super into it and that's what prompted me to comment. The "yellow" in your video seems to be a recent nostalgic theme from our parents' and grandparents' homes.
im only a few minutes in. but i really appreciate the upgraded cinematography here. a lot of work went into each of these shots and it shows. great work!
As a Turkish, a.k.a. not an American, I'm surprised how all the things you say can be applied to Turkey's left as well. It's probably the same for lots of other countries too. This is truly a great take on global left as a whole.
Is liberalism a trojan horse for the ideals of the status quo? Is Hamilton a trojan horse for liberalism? Was PROMESA a trojan horse for neocolonial pillage? Was this video a trojan horse for a reminder that Thomas Jefferson Miku binder exists?
I remember how weird this culture shift was in real time. From the musical blowing up in 2015-16 to the 2020 pro-shot, the difference in reception was huge. The musical came out when I was in middle school, so I assumed it was just a “growing up” thing that I didn’t enjoy it as much in 2020 as I did listening to the 2015 cast recording soon after it dropped. I had already gotten sick of the music by 2017, when I had the privilege to see it in Chicago, but even then I wasn’t very critical of the show itself. But it wasn’t until thinkpieces about Hamilton surfaced in the wake of the pro-shot on Disney did I realize that it wasn’t just me growing up or overplaying the music-the culture had changed. Mind you, I wasn’t part of the online fandom outside of watching some animatics and original cast interviews/performances, so I doubt I had the whiplash that a lot of other people my age got. But wow, was it a sign of the times.
DUDE I'M GONNA FUCKING LOVE THIS Colonial history is an early special interest of mine (live in Virginia) and I really adored Hamilton for a long time, but so much of what it is and what it represents is so counter to how I view history (especially after reading the book *"An Indigenous People's History of the United States"* recently) and I don't really know how I 'should' feel about it anymore. My heart wants to jump to defend it, because it's so good artistically and I have so many good memories of it (Listening to it in the car with my dad all the time, going to see it live in DC post covid) but my brain says I know enough that I probably shouldn't try. Anyway point being I always look forward to your videos, but with this topic I know it's gonna be an absolute banger! EDIT: That bit about Lin saying the musical is kind of also about/for writers also hits me hard because I'm a writer at heart too. Hurricane is probably my favorite song in a personal capacity, I understand the perspective and rationalization of Hamilton (the character) so much in that song. Additionally, I understand if this won't be discussed in the video but Lin (and by extention his depiction of the character of Hamilton) resonates with me as VERY adhd, idk if he's ever talked about it publicly though. There's a lot of ways Lin's version of Hamilton mirrors my own personality, both in his strengths and flaws. That's overall a good thing though, because it allows me to reflect on my own assumptions as well as not make similar mistakes in my own life to Hamilton (the character)
The thing that annoys me about the discussion of american liberal policy is that it usually ignores the existence of All Other Countries (except for a vague recollection of communism/russia/ussr). Like. There are other countries out there. A lot of them are doing better than the USA. It would be interesting to look at those examples and see what can be learned from them & how to implement those changes But its easier and less work to only look at america (which is only the usa and no other countries) and Wait For The Glorious Revolution
I mean, part of it is that the USA basically has systematically stamped out alternatives to US culture. We should look to other countries that are doing leftist policy better, but at the end of the day the US only persists when there is absolutely no left countries left. And the fact that we let them happen is more a function of the US being too caught up in its own issues rather than the ability for the US to stamp out non-US culture.
@@RobinRaye-np3vwIt’s very popular to label white people as “corny” or “goofy.” They can’t dance, rap, season they food, be sincere political activists, jump, or anything otherwise known as “cool”.
Cringe is the status quo. It is the anti-queer. I am become divergent. I looked into the cringe void and saw nothing but a mirror of insecurity meant to stall me on my journey. Reject the oppressive force of the norm. Avoid the Noid.
Oh thank god for telling people to Log Off and Touch Grass in a kind way that also namedrops multiple genuinely useful organizations (2/3 of which I have volunteered for myself! And are excellent big-tent first involvement pass options)
Im having a shit day at work n im watching this on my lunch and chanting "post-hole post-hole post-hole!!" Is the first thing that has made me crack a smile today soooooo thank you very much, very inspirational heartwarming educational other good algo words thank you thank you thank you
I went to bed after writing the comment out of respect and because I was really tired but I will continue watching this masterpiece now, thank you for all the work you put into the videos!! 🫡
Get out of my brain, I hate parasocial isms but I do feel like I'm in conversation with you watching this. Thank you thank you thank you. You've given voice to so many emotions I've felt and tried to articulate (to minimal avail) for so long. Thanks for the structural analysis cheats, hoping to help construct post hole discourse post grad with this as inspiration !!!
I was obsessed with Hamilton for about a year and a half starting in 2016. I was seventeen. The post-obsession shame was so intense, I couldn’t look at, listen to, or watch anything related to it until this year because of its reputation online. I watched it on Disney+ for the first time this fourth of July, and it hurt my heart and brain how much it was still ingrained in me. I don't know how to feel about it. Will update when I finish watching. edit: okay, the amount of thought, consideration, and nuance in this video is staggering. I feel empowered, I think. There are things to be done, and I am capable of contributing. That's what matters. I am not a bad person for having had a fixation on a flawed thing. Thinking that way only makes me feel powerless, and who does that serve? Not my community, not myself. Will I watch Hamilton again? Maybe. It has value and merit as well as huge blind spots. But I'll try not to shrink away from it anymore.
its my personal headcannon that your home has amazing interior design cause damn the sets look so hot (good wasn't enough of a descriptor for how much i acc love the dressing)
I'm a leftist guilty of loving Hamilton, still loving to hear any criticism of it because it's always correct, but at the same time I simply love it. Starting at the 2:00:00 mark starts the best critique of online leftism I've ever heard. Thank you. As a Nicaraguan living in Costa Rica this election truly impacts not only the US, but many of us in Latin America trapped within the decisions of US politicians.
Once again another banger of a video essay. Nothing really gets me thinking about stuff like your videos. Also I love how it's kinda like a full circle moment for your channel. I remember watching the are they gay for Hamilton x Laurens. Although it's probably not full circle because you've made stuff before and will make stuff after and i only think that bc it was one of the videos I really liked of yours back then. Idk whatever, chef's kiss. 10/10
Hey! I liked this video but I had some critiques I wanted to share. In your section on the reality of the American Revolution you argue that the heart of the revolution, the truly aspirational element, was the multiracial motley crew. I think there is some validity to this but on the whole it is inadequate and overstated. Multiracial coalitions of revolutionaries in large numbers I would argue really dissipated after Bacon’s Rebellion when colonial aristocracy recognized the threat of indentured servants and slaves joining together and persued a move towards deepening slavery and away from indentured servitude. But, I think it’s important to recognize this coalition was not universally inclusive, Bacon’s rebellion itself set off by anti-Native settler sentiment and the desire to expand in to territory that Natives held and was protected by the British crown. Black and white coalitions could still very much be opposed to Natives. While Black people and Natives fought on both sides of the American revolution, but more Black people fought for the British and the reasons they fought for the respective sides had to do more with personal economic opportunity for freedom than enlightenment conceptions of liberty and democracy. Natives too fought on both sides of the revolution in substantial roles because they were trying to utilize the conflict between the colonies and Great Britain to dominate other native tribes they felt in more competition with and to ensure access to trade with European settlers. Your argument, while not the same, and certainly backed by more substantial evidence, reminds me more of confederate sympathizers claims that the Confederacy wasn’t driven by slavery because in a few instances Black people for individual reasons fought on the side of the Confederacy. I think your earlier analysis was much more apt when you described human rights as originating from flawed enlightenment ideals. Revolution and liberty are also products of flawed enlightenment ideas. I’d argue that actually your original point about the aristocratic revolutionaries being entrenched in a racist system of profiteering is applicable to the lower class white men who rebelled largely due to their desire for more land and fears of slave revolt, which were inextricably linked with economic independence and political representation. The revolution was not inspired by the Enlightenment so much as economic opportunity that came at the expense of Black people and Natives. Look at the Declaration of Independence to see grievances listed about internal rebellion (slave revolt) and British alignment with natives. Overlooked in your analysis is the aftermath of Seven Years’ War. In order to prevent further conflict, Britain imposed the Proclamation Line of 1763 which restricted settlers moving westward, angering common colonists who were in America for the opportunity to gain wealth and prestige (British alignment with Natives was one of the biggest causes of the American Revolution- see Bacon’s Rebellion). Additionally, the taxes imposed to recoup costs became the subject of immense anger by American colonists, elite and common who felt there was an intrusion on de facto homerule, economic stifling, inherent unfair taxation that amounted to theft because of America’s status of a colony dependent on Britain for economic growth, and a lack of political representation in Britain despite seeing themselves as full citizens of the British Empire. Your argument about the American Revolution basically is that a multiracial revolution of enlightenment ideals was co-opted and suppressed by aristocratic colonists who wanted to maintain elite control over the territories. Essentially, a political revolution was stopped by economic interest. I disagree with this. I’d argue that a mutual economic interest between common white Americans and the local aristocracy (as well as a proxy war with France! and British entanglements elsewhere) is what powered the American Revolution and this revolution resulted in embryonic republican and democratic institutions based on the ideals of economic independence and political representation that would grow to be the commendable legacy of the American Revolution. Essentially, exclusionary economic motivation drove the formation of evolutionary political institutions. In order to preserve the economic order, Americans created a new political order, expanding on the idea of popular sovereignty and the role of democracy in government, but this liberalization was built upon racism and chattel slavery (I found your argument about human rights being derived from flawed European enlightenment ideals persuasive and a helpful basis for understanding how America could entrench its racism while growing more democratic). Just as human rights are the conception and product of european institutional thought, so are the democratizing and revolutionary effort of the american revolution. I think here is a good moment to compare the American Revolution with the French and Haitian Revolutions. I agree with you that while obviously both also had a basis in economic motivation, both were driven primarily by more enlightenment philosophy, which to many make them more laudable. However, if you look at how these revolutions ended, you see one turn to terror to dictator (who reimposed slavery) to monarchy, and the other turn towards aristocracy and economic instability. The actual institutions that arose from these revolutions failed, their enlightenment underpinnings failing to hold their weight. In contrast, America’s government survived, incredibly imperfect, but more representative than the governments that preceded it, and capable of sustainable, if slow, change (although importantly not on the question of slavery). My views of the American Revolution is basically, it realized some of the enlightenment ideals sustainably because it was based on economic realities, which constrained the realization of enlightenment ideals. Importantly, the two driving parties of the American Revolution, the common citizens and the aristocracy, both supported a racist society that offered no hope for Black emancipation and Native sovereignty (and that the British while arguably less cruel and more aligned with minorities than their American counterparts also did not represent Black or Native interests). Furthermore, American conception of liberty was predicated on white supremacy. My views of the subsequent revolutions can basically be summarized as the French and Haitian Revolutions were more innovative philosophically (and based in more expansive notions of racial equality) but unable to materially significantly benefit their populations and fulfill the ideals their leaders espoused. If you are interested in discussing further let me know! I have a few thoughts on portions of your video I haven’t touched upon but I’ve written enough. I also wanted to say that while most of this comment is criticism there’s obviously a lot in this video I agree with but that’s just less helpful to talk about. In particular I thought your analysis of human rights and enlightenment ideals and the successes of Hamilton’s rhetoric at the end of the video particularly persuasive. P.S. You mention the essay, “The End of History?” I don’t agree with everything in this essay but I think it is very misunderstood and often referenced when people are pointing to it and critiquing liberalism. I think you argue the essay essentially says that the neoliberal world order had triumphed and you then point to war and economic inequality and whatnot to prove that it hasn’t and that neoliberals are naïve (again, I’m not a neoliberal I just disagree with this interpretation). Fukuyama argues the 20th century was based upon the competition of Communism and Capitalism and that in the USSR’s collapse and China’s movement away from Marxist-Leninism, communism has been discredited while Capitalism prevails. Fukuyama then argues that history devoid of conflict between big ideas and philosophies will be fundamentally stagnant and comprised of many petty conflicts. In turn, Fukuyama suggests that the prospect of this bleak future may inspire new ideologies to challenge the neoliberal world order.
Thank you so much for this. The message was grounding for me in more ways than I can articulate. I just reached out to some local community orgs that I admire. Hopefully they have some ways I can volunteer and help organize. I want to do something.
has anyone else noticed that alexanders audio is much quieter than all of the other clips included in this video or is it just me? amazing amazing video im obsessed you have answered all of the questions i have in my mind all the time while walking through this amerikkkan hellscape ... you are so smart alexander!!!! thank you for sharing yourself with the internet- you are doing us all a great service
Wow, Alexander! Wow! You are amazing! I wrote a longer comment listing what I value about your essay and what it made me think, but I am internet shy, so I deleted it. However, please know that I find beautiful and precious your intelligence, generosity, optimism, and non-judgmental disposition. Thank you! And greetings from Colombia! ¡Hasta la próxima!
Can’t believe you chose to parody the world was wide enough and say “there are three things you need to know” at 1:53:03 when the line “and I realize three fundamental truths at the exact same time” from satisfied was RIGHT THERE smh
I'm an hour in and I love everything about this. You're verbalizing so much of what had always felt was off about our country and how we've formed human societies. The idea that "human" is a construct of the government is a fascinating idea that makes a lot of sense. You and cjthex inspire me artistically and intellectually so much, I actually feel capable of doing something instead of utterly hopeless and helpless.
I'm only halfway through but I'm already really enjoying this one ! It sums up pretty quickly and efficiently a lot of things I've read during my studies, and I like your willingness to confront the sociology-driven existential crisis.
I like the way your argument links the philosophical to the political, and the analysis of populism as the reaction to the failures of liberalism it often is. Feeling pretty enlightened rn.
This is one of the most thought provoking video essays I’ve seen in so long. You lay out your arguments with such care and substance. Fantastic work Alex
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Empower yourself with access to diverse perspectives and improve your media consumption habits by subscribing through my link ground.news/alexanderavila for 40% off unlimited access this month with the Vantage Subscription and be the change you want to see.
yes
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I love you so much Alexander. I wanted to click away but I could not stop watching I am having such a fantastic time! You're excellent, your videos have gotten so much more compelling over the years! Great job!
Axiom: "We should increase the wellbeing and decrease the suffering for the most about of living organisms possible, to the best of our autonomous ability."
There, solved your whole video😎
no miku binder mention during the fanart section?? that was more culturally significant than the musical itself
Just you wait…
ADDENDUM: MIKU BINDER METIONED AT 33:52
Miku Binder appears at 33:47
@@jettobrien284I would actually unsubscribe if Miku Binder was not in this video
Have patience, my friend.
from the creator of "are they gay alexander hamilton and john laurens" comes a nuanced intellectual discussion about the culture of american liberalism
We love to see great character development❤❤
oh my moms gonna be PISSED when she finds out that in 2 hours 23 minutes and 37 seconds she has to listen to me yap about Hamilton
I'm very disappointed in you for skipping that 1 second
Yeah maybe have some dedication???
I’ve made a severe and continuous lapse in judgement
@@staleravioli9619not enough. Get the ukulele, interpretive dance, dj set, dog, jeffree stars golden couch, and all white clothing and then maybe we will forgive eyou
better than the 2 hours and 23 minutes it takes to listen to hamilton?
As someone who was pretty libbed up about Hamilton, there is one moment in time I find myself thinking about a lot. Miranda hosted SNL in October of 2016, the day after the Trump/Billy Bush tape released. For the monologue, he did a parody of My Shot where at one point he calls Trump a piece of shit and then jumps into “well he’s never gonna be president now, never gonna be president now,” and that shit haunts me. Like of course he made that joke because to so many, it seemed impossible that someone caught on tape saying “grab them by the pussy” could ever get elected president. Regardless, it’s one of countless examples from that time of Liberal arrogance and unyielding trust in political civility that helped Trump win. For me, and I imagine others, Hamilton felt like a symbol of progress, but in reality it was a fundamental misunderstanding of what America Now actually is (songs still bop though and It’s Quiet Uptown makes me cry)
I remember that SNL moment clearly. And it still haunts me
I think the funny thing about that moment is that it's sort of ended up aging like fine wine when he did actually lose.
That's it, I feel like what America is and how it relates to Hamilton is always going to be an ever-changing thing.
I think Trump won because he managed to (like the video stated) pander to a demographic of people who at that point felt like they were the least common denominator.
💯, particularly how good the songs are, regardless of all the asterisks they have. I also get teary-eyed with One Last Time (I ugly cry with It's Quiet Uptown).
@@desdar100 Exactly. And he was able to manipulate issues of class by projecting the Demcrats as everything that is wrong with American politics in its _entirety_. So many leftists talk about working class revolution but can’t even address the half of the electorate that are ready to vote in potentially authoritarian policies.
I love your videos mr. razbuten!!
The video started playing by default in 144p and I thought that was a stylistic choice before I realised it was my internet.
144p looks great on this video actually. Quite soothing...
I just noticed I watch everything in 360p lmao
This made me laugh
LMFAOOOOOO
No fr tho, why does 144p just look right @kamek7361
1:05:57 It's an Ursula K le Guin quote but rephrased worse by other people: "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
Hopefully Marxism will be similarly escapable. I mean, eventually people will figure out it's a bad idea after the hundredth genocide - right?
Wow. This quote is incredible
The issue with that thinking is that it’s a false equivalency. Historically, only kings benefitted from the divine right of kings. A lot more people across the economic spectrum benefit (or at least believe they benefit) from capitalism. That interconnectedness makes it a lot harder to topple without massively destroy a lot of peoples’ quality of life.
@@lman318 True, but "harder to topple responsibly" doesn't mean "impossible to topple responsibly"
@@unidentifiedwhistlingobjec6515 i didn’t say topple responsibly. I said it was a lot more difficult to topple at all
Now you have to make a 3 hour video of essay on miku binder Thomas Jefferson and the necessity of cringe art
what do you mean this isn’t a miku binder video essay…
strangeaeons has a great video called something like "the insane scandal of tumblr's hivliving" though it's more just a historical/documentary overview of the tumblr discourse lol. good to tide us over until we get alexander's video essay 🙏
this is a job for cxthex
holy shit thinkpiece why do you have to be so based bro
A youtuber named Beef Bronson also did a whole 45 minutes analysis of miku binder Jefferson
I have IMMENSE respect for the decision to place a mid roll ad break right after the line “every day we see hundreds of advertisers trying to sell us their version of a grand story”
That resolute meme of capital, the mid-roll, ad has been bent into meaning by your essay, very impressive
Wow. On the off-chance that you read this comment, thank you for speaking to the truth I have been trying to articulate. I am a leftist teacher in a red state constantly battling my own inner demons of ideology and philosophy as I look out the window and watch the world burn around me. It's so easy to become a jaded "revolutionary" leftist and ho-hum about how change will never happen in our insane neoliberal surveillance state. I can't say I don't still think a revolution would best benefit all free people in this country, but I also can't armchair philosophize any longer without driving myself insane. There's a line I have to walk to keep my job and pursue my career, which I am extremely passionate about. There's also a whole lot of work to be done out there in the meantime. Thank you for articulating that there isn't only two options available for leftists these days, that we aren't doomed to either be ineffective but disgruntled cogs or flamed out revolutionaries, that small action makes material differences in people's lives regardless of how dire the situation may seem. I admire your optimism and I'm not sure I share it, but that doesn't mean I can't use my own material resources to try to make someone else's situation better. Thank you, really. I'm going to go fight to become my school's new union rep after our old one left.
I hear this completely, and becoming a union rep is a badass step toward creating change. Leftists building power within unions and using the economic leverage they have to make bigger demands and disrupt the economic and political order until those demands are met is a way to turn small, individual actions into large, collective action. I think we can also support each other through a diversity of tactics--we can cheer for anarchist mutual aid collectives attempting to build parallel structures of community care as alternatives to the state, cheer for members of the Uncommitted Movement strategically withholding their votes to attempt to pressure the federal government to change course on Palestine, and cheer for democratic socialists running electoral campaigns for leftists in local government. We can be critical of each other and push each other to be better and still come together in community to fight for a better world on a local, national, and international stage!
"I can't say I don't still think a revolution would best benefit all free people in this country..."
What about retirees who are dependent on social security checks to buy groceries? What about people on disability? Medicaid? People who are dependent on any government program? Yes, these programs are very flawed but there are still some people who are on them and who need them. Revolutions are messy and chaotic. If you destroy the system, do you have a plan immediately ensure that those who were dependent on that system will not starve?
If your revolution is from without, it cannot possibly help everyone. Somebody will get hurt.
@@ferlessleedr All valid points. I have elderly parents who live off of social security checks, and my father is on VA insurance, so it is on my mind quite frequently. I also have a grandfather who has been living comfortably off of his union-negotiated pension for decades. He inspires me every day. Always my biggest cheerleader for unionizing. The above comment addresses the idea of setting up mutual aid funds and resources apart from the government to aid folks that need it. And an anarcho-leftist who is a close friend of mine has a similar vision. I'm not a visionary and would never position myself as a political leader, just someone who is trying to reason through the violent and harmful system we have and imagine a brighter future. I don't claim to have answers, just a sincere desire to see right done by all free people and not just those naturally gifted a position of power and capital. Thanks for the warranted criticism--I see your point and it's a factor in my political beliefs and values.
@ferlessleedr I would think that a revolution includes MORE programs and coverage to support people through life. Numbers wise, there's plenty of room in the war & sex trade budget for that. Where on earth did humans get the notion that revolutions absolutely have to be violent and unpleasant?
I feel like shame over moderated pleasure and feeling good is what's holding us back from a proper, root cause targeted revolution. I think a lot of humans are convinced they know everything about life, and that life has to overall feel bad.
A revolution where the people are cared for SHOULD include services to support them. People of all types need care and resources - idk how much further I can explain that one. Everyone is dependent on the system somehow. That's why it's so hard to dismantle.
😂😂😂The educational system exists to form worker bees that will reproduce the capitalist economic system. The left needs to create a pipeline system like the alt-right pipeline that is not liberal (Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube). Crowder, Shapiro, and Prager influence people in the real world.
I think the Hamilton musical and its reception kind of encapsulates why I decided to major in American Studies - the myth and the reality of America, and how people are trying to navigate the two. Always found that super fascinating
this is such a succinct way to describe why I decided, as a history major, to specialize in American history and plan to get a masters in American studies.
All of history is mythology. When we talk about the French Revolution, we talk about Robespierre, Marie-Antoinette, and Napoleon. About the Bolshevik Revolution, the Tsar, Lenin, and Stalin. No one cares about John Doe. There will be no sudden awakening by the masses by shining a light on John Doe’s life in revolutionary America. Leftists alienate the average proletarian by being as provocative as possible instead of speaking to their needs.
As a foreigner living in America but fascinated by its history, this is why I read American classics. I really feel like no other country in the world lives in the middle, the fantasy of the past and future, with the cruel reality of the present.
@@lllinaiI feel like Russia and a lot of Eastern European nations are particularly obsessed with their past
"The weight of slavery would break Hamilton". YEP, 100% agree
I disagree. The placement of slavery as a given would be a problem but you need to genuinely show who willingly puts the boot down and why.
"Molasses to Rum to Slaves" is a good starting place but 1776 is both a different time and a different show. So why is it a given in 1789? Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe... and Adams. Ah, the confirmed anti-slavery Adams is both Hamiltons' punching bag, that might be connected.
@@tskmaster3837but this Hamilton wasn’t about that aspect of his life and American history. Trying to encompass as much as possible would muddle the story the author wanted to tell. There’s absolutely room for media examining other aspects of Hamilton and the founding fathers in general, like slavery. I think it’s necessary, even, but it doesn’t all need to be in one piece of media. Bringing slavery into this Hamilton would completely derail the story and pull the audience out of it, because if you directly acknowledge that slavery is a part of the story, you have to follow through. You can’t just drop in a massive subject like that: it either becomes an integral part of the story or else it appears disingenuous. But if you make it an integral part of the story, it clashes with all the pieces that make Hamilton distinct.
@@VultureSkinsIt reminds me of the two film interpretations of The Color Purple.
@@kalka1l and how both cut the queerness from the original material?
Honestly, I feel as if, if slavery was included in Hamilton, depending on how it was done(Cause yeah, good points are made here about it needing to be integral to the story...)it could've been a better piece of art.
If the musical is about "the story of America then told by America now" going off of how slavery would "break" Hamilton, that's perfect.
As the musical itself delivers more of the essence of the principles that America founded itself on in a dramatized/ideal way, chronicling the journey of an immigrant coming with nothing, pulling himself up by his bootstraps and the support of the free people,rightfully placing himself in the upper echelons of society....
(A chronicle many still champion for all citizens of the US( immigrant or not) slavery and various other tragedies of the past are shattering realities that reasonably breaks it all down.
And that's perfect for the sentiments of hamiltons mission. (The diversity of the acting cast makes it even more ideal!)
There are people now(marginalized groups and minorites alongside the majority) who don't take the past seriously and continue to harm their own communities, people who downplay or don't want to look at America's gritty history, and instead look to areas of society (wealthy/powerful,considerable more "respectable") they hope to be in, completely ignoring the issues that may keep them from it. (Or why wanting to be in those spaces is bad )
If Hamilton faced that head on, it wouldn't break Hamilton(in my opinion), it'd break the facade of a perfect country some seem to continue to believe we live in, and shift the tone of the play from the essence of americas core patriotism and pride to the reality of the (miseducation/misinformation/ hatred/mistreatment/and pain that does ruin that for everyone already.
Oh wow. This just reminded me that your Are They Gay Laurens and Hamilton video was literally the first ever thing I saw on your channel. My life has finally come full circle.
someone wrote a THESIS about thomas jefferson miku binder????? i want to meet them.
Yea what's their name?
I'm gonna see if I can find the thesis and I will link it here
@@failedrevolutionary9497 Any luck?
found it. it's titled “I Need You to Pretend to Date Me” Tracing Fanwork from Source to its Furthest Extreme, written by peter egger and is avaliable to download as pdf on the mcgill university (montreal, canada). it also has sections about the fandoms of other popular musicals, not only hamilton
YOU ARE A SAINT
i love how this guy went from "is it GAY?" to "is it... IT?"
THIS IS REAL IM SO CONFUSED 😭 I THOUGHT I HAD THE WRONG CHANNEL UNTIL I SAW THE PFP
Forget post-nut clarity, this is Post-modern clarity
post hole. clarity.
@@poe.and.theholograms finger but hole
@@poe.and.thehologramspost-nut clarity?
@@danielhercules2061 Ah, hex nut. Gotcha.
Post-post-modern clarity
You know what? I still have no idea of what to do but you made me realize that I have a really avoidant personality and that all the times I've tried political activism I've ended up abandoning it because of conflict or because I don't see any change and I get disappointed. I've never even thought about powering through, about accepting there's gonna be differences and try to work it out or accept that my contribution it's gonna be small and probably barely noticeable. So thank you so much ❤
I am an English teacher in Créteil France. We studied the musical in class. My kids were excited and went on Wikipedia to get more info. I remember one who told me, ma’am it sucks! There is nobody black in the story… I cackled.
J'aurais tellement aimé étudier ce genre de trucs à l'école 🤩
Bravo madame ❤
do not cite the deep magic of the hamilton fandom to me, alexander avila. I was there when it was written.
Yeah! I was there too!
the aesthetic of the room you're in is so tasteful and soothing
Omg Hamilton was such an era in liberal American culture that is hard to describe now, buckled up for this one!!
The thing is that's the musical has never really left.
In fact, everything's a rounding this Biden and Trump stuff is playing at exactly like the plot of it
Honestly, I wonder why we think this is progress. This is just another turn of the wheel of “absolute good versus absolute evil” show that has been playing ever since the 1980s in federal politics. Let me know when the wheel breaks and then I will care about politics more than a sigh and a shuffle to throw away my vote no matter who I vote.
my brain automatically says your name to the tune/rhythm of that one "Alexander Hamilton" chorus drop. every time. I've never even seen Hamilton
DUN DUNDUNDUNDUN DUN DUN DOOOO DOOOOOO DOOOOOOooOOOOOO DOOOOO
been searching for long videos to watch to keep me busy as i recover from top surgery. now i know what im doing for the foreseeable future. youve done it again
Congrats on getting top surgery!!! Sending lots of good vibes❤💪🏾🏳️🌈
grats on the chop ❤🏳️⚧️
just searched what top surgery is, wow hope the recovery is smooth 👍
Congrats on your chest eviction!! Hope your recovery goes smoothly, it's frustrating not being able to raise your arms above your head for a month 😂
CONGRATS DUDE🎉🎉🎉
watching the second half of this video hits so much harder this week god damn
Part of me hopes we see Lin turn around 7-10 years hence to make another stage musical after having had time to percolate and move left. Of course he would have made his money by then, but I can acknowledge how that feels while understanding his voice to be powerful and his position capable of influence for the common good... Maybe the PROMESA thing broke his heart enough to radicalize him against the system. As a third-gen PR immigrant myself, I hope he takes it as an opportunity to turn against the status quo that betrayed him - that betrayed all our families, on the island and in the diaspora. I hope he turns to the work. I value his presence. We all need to learn things. Keep trying, Lin. Keep trying.
actually manifesting a lmm redemption arc now
I mean its valid, but if he gets more radicalized left due , you know
or at least a kamala play, not to worhip or glorify her but becaus eshe probably deserves it.
He actually is making a “Warriors” musical
@@hectornerio2901...like, the cat book series? *Dares to hope*
I need that so badly 😭
i’ve been watching you for about 2 years and every video you just manage to get even better. like not be earnest on main but you take some really dense topics and connect it holistically to history and current events and make it so digestible that it’s insane. genuinely can’t thank u enough for putting so much thought and effort into these videos!!
“Since most of you are gay people-“ KSKSAKJSLSKSKAKSJDKSJSF I am just a statistic in ways I never could have predicted
I'm not even gay but laughed out loud at how matter of factly he made that statement 😂
“The type of thing that makes you want to kiss and hold hands with a boy. Just me?” Broke me 🤣
When you used “Jeffrey Bezos” as the music for “strong central government” I was both amused and nervous
Love your talk about us "all being transgender." I'm always vocal about cis dysphoria and gender as a performance. It has a the same flavor of @FDsignifier pointing out "white men" as a demographic with genuine greviances and deserving of sympathy and specific care rather then seeing them as "default" like the system does and therefore considering them undeserving of examination in left spaces. That "default" is not a benefit. It is a harm.
Exactly, toxic masculine expectancies of patriarchal societies hurt cis men as well. It's all of our rights.
+
I don't like FD Signifier at all but I agree with this point a lot
@@AutisticTransbian04wait why don’t you like fd signifier?
People who want to police transgender bodies, just want to police genders. Look at what Elon Musk and JK Rowlings did to the female boxer, Imane Khelif. Am I feminine enough for Miss Rowling to consider me cisgender? Is it ok to discriminate against me for my masculine dress and hobbies if you label me a man with breast? Cis or trans, if we don’t fit in a box, we all run the risk of being misgendered now.
In love with your aspect ratio
Capitalism is the freedom to choose between 16:9 and 4:3.
@@huskeyzoo God I love capitalism.
This is why I think Hamilton has always felt different to me since I got to it during the Trump era.
I never saw Hamilton as this great man but a deeply flawed character who did some pretty substantial things surrounded by those same sorts of actors. Daveed Diggs and Christoper Jackson said they struggled to preform their roles just because they were glorifying these men who proudly and unashamedly owned human beings who looked like them but also saw that they did some truly amazing things as well. And for me it’s the lines “If we win our independence, is that a guarantee of freedom for our descendants? or will the blood be shed begin an endless cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants” and “America, you great unfinished Symphony” at the end of the musical that always felt like that was the main message of the story.
That America is an experiment with some deeply rooted contradictions and that must be rectified before it crumbles under its own strength. Which I think is a much more beautiful message. A story of triumph, failure, the human condition and overall the legacy you leave behind.
And watching this I am honestly happy I got to Hamilton during the Trump Admin because to have seen Hamilton as anything but a demonstration of the triumphs and failure of man I’d probably have just appreciated the songs more, and less the story itself.
Yeah a lot of people are trying to claim that the musical isn't relevant anymore, but I firmly disagree. I don't think it was glorifying the characters, nor was it demonizing them. It was showing them as complex human beings who share a lot of similarities to us in the modern day. To really wrestle with that requires a lot of nuance and self-reflection though, which I don't think internet spaces are well suited for
It’s not that complicated to see why Trump won. Here’s a quote from his RNC acceptance speech:
“We are often told that being an American is about being dedicated to a collection of abstractions and buzzwords: democracy…freedom…tolerance….multiculturalism…But a nation based on "freedom" is just another place to go shopping. It's a country for everyone…and thus a country for no one…it's a country in which we ourselves have become strangers. Man doesn't live, and man doesn't die, for abstractions like "freedom." Man lives and dies for a homeland…for a people and its future…for beauty…for the power of being part of something bigger than one's self…”
I kinda thought George Washington would hate the idea of being portrayed by a black man, and the audience knowing that is an important part of the story telling 🤷♀️ “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story…” Your story is ours now, Mr. Washington because, well, you’re dead
@@aesop1451 Good point. The silent part is that the working class wont die for Trump in the battlefield unless he gives them a homeland to pretend to own
"My Shot" slaps but this shatters
2:15:20 "vote in your local election... because it's the difference between people like me getting healthcare or not" THIS SO MUCH, especially in the primaries! Billionaires are catching up and pumping money into local primaries because they know it's important.
Watching this without having seen Hamilton. #Anarchism
Same
I knew just about memes and little bits of songs and them I see Lin-Manuel Miranda and I'm like... wait... I know this guy... (he played Alvie in House MD)
I saw the Mr. Show “Rap: The Musical” skit. That’s basically the same thing, right?
“Spoilers are bad”
“Spoilers don’t matter”
“Nah, spoilers are necessary”
If i can prove that I never touched my balls would you promise not to tell another soul just what you saw?
this is the most well-made, well-researched, and well-articulated video I have ever seen on YT...you deserve your own HBO show
I think I need to hang the last 5 minutes of this video in a frame on my wall, tattoo it into my brain, and turn it into my daily affirmation; this essay encompasses all the complicated feelings I have about America, liberalism, leftism, online activism, and the failures of all 4 over the past decade in a way I was never able to articulate. Thank you so much for making this, genuinely, from the bottom of my soul.
Canadian here. I'm not living in a 1:1 version of your world but I know things are similar over here. I'm of a similar mind-it's our duty to put in the work here and now. I love how this video went all kinds of everywhere but it feels genuinely cohesive and put together. I also adore your call to action. Great stuff.
Post-modernism is really, really good, at analyzing structures and offering solutions that boil down to tearing everything down. Some post-modernists even put forward a "back to nature" idea that feels very Rousseau. And to be clear, maybe we should tear down most of the structures that form society. But children still have to go to school, and old people still need their walkers, and you need to eat, and eating requires a society. While we're tearing it all down, we also have to use the rubble to make something new. And that act of imagining, of picturing and hoping for something better than what exists now for everyone, is what you have to believe in. to put it in hamilton terms "Every action's an act of creation, I'm laughin' in the face of casualties and sorrow, For the first time, I'm thinkin' past tomorrow." That's as close to truth as I think we'll ever get if you're looking for meaning in political philosophy. You gotta get past critique and start making something new, on the micro level and the macro. To make something new, you need connections, a social group to fight for and with and to create with. People you love. People the people you love, love. I'm an atheist, but if you accept that god is a form of The capital-T Truth or vice versa, then to quote another musical about a different revolution, "to love another person is to see the face of god."
this is a beautiful comment
This is raw.
I really think the next enlightenment is going to be a religious one. Atheism and secularism pave the way for an ultramodernist world where nothing is sacred and so anything can be commodified. And I don't mean religious in the theocratic sense either, since all the dogmatic churches have bent down to capital just as easily, but a real spiritualism like in the above comment. Some shit in life matters more than any value counter, and more people need to live this and not just cliche it.
I'm an alcoholic
You perfectly encapsulated how leftist thought and never ending doomerism with no solutions actually made me apolitical but the imagining keeps me back and informed. Not the wokescolding and critique with no action that’s excused under “surviving under capitalism” of which characterises a lack of building that of which was necessary to re examine.
Deconstruction only works with reconstruction
coming back to this post-election hits different.
The talk about ‘human’ being defined by structures of power vividly reminded me of an elder I met once at a big trans conference, who was telling me about how back in the day if police got involved when trans folks were harassed/beaten/etc, many times these incidents would be downplayed and reported as ‘no human involved’. That has always stuck with me. Everything is connected.
I thought that point was the most brain dead take I’ve ever heard. No one had a concept of what a human was until the enlightenment? It sounds like it’s compelling when you say it out loud but when you think about it for 2 seconds it’s obviously completely nonsensical
@@TheRaggedFlygon when you listen for more than 2 seconds it makes way more sense....
@@phirion6341 yeah the enlightenment invented the concept of humanity. Thanks
1:31 "For the first time in 180 years" I understand that this is more of a rethorical tool but cmon the revolutions of 1830 1848 and the Paris commune surely brought France face to face with its revolutionary fervour a little sooner than 1968
Yeah, I'm really not sure what that's supposed to mean. I remember that during the Toulouse unrests newsmedia were bringing up the fact that France is on the brink of or in the middle of a revolution pretty much all the time. Three monarchies, two empires and five republics.
i was so sucked into the video that i was literally jumpscared by those clips of lin manuel miranda rapping during what looks like a college commencement ceremony and now i can’t stop laughing, help i’m dying and i can’t get up
My condolences on presumably your near death experience
My favourite is the clip of Lin Manuel Miranda singing Gesthemane.
Miranda: Why should I die?
Me: Just….why?
I had to pause it there I was like there is no way I just witnessed this with no warning I almost died as well
2:06:28
When Hamilton came out the only other show at the time that notably had Black actors was The Lion King. While I appreciate the huge leap made in diverse casting that came post-Hamilton, I've always found making Black actors choose between playing animals and playing slave owners difficult to swallow down as "progressive"
Book of Mormon: Am I a joke to you?
@@lman318 shit, you're right. I forgot about Book of Mormon 🤦♂️
The only other show that “notably” had black actors…. wtf does “notably” even mean in this sentence?
@@shedshow1439 that they're long-standing shows that intentionally had predominantly Black casts (and made the casting a large part of their advertising too). Dreamgirls, Hairspray, and The Color Purple similarly center around Black casts, they just weren't absolutely dominating Broadway in the same way that Hamilton and Lion King (and Book of Mormon) were at the time. Being a notably "Black" show isn't itself a negative, but historically roles for Black actors haven't been terribly nuanced. Thankfully that's been changing, and, to give credit where it's due, Hamilton accelerated that process.
You reminded me of how incredible it is that Hamilton successfully made blacks play white slaveowners and embrace themselves as part of *the slaveowners'* history.
Alex: "Everyday we see hundreds of advertisements trying to sell us their version of a grand story-"
TH-cam at that exact moment: "Here's an ad"
Me: "coincidence or irony?"
Dude the same thing happened to me! Hilarious asf
This also happened to me
afaik youtubers DO choose the times for ad breaks-probably irony
TH-camrs can pick when ads show up, guarantee he did that on purpose
I got some very loud scooby Doo shenanigans (???), I wasn't looking at the video so thought it was an edit
Your ability to clearly articulate a complex thesis and keep the thread engaging and digestible for the duration of a video like this is truly commendable. Great work, very thought provoking
Really liked the last half hour-ish of the video with your conclusions, especially the part about trying to find the universal struggle and truth behind issues like how trans-rights relates to how notions of gender can hurt us all
Under oppressive conditions, everyone struggles to some degree, including the ones who benefit most from it.
Yeah I really liked it too. I've seen some socialists/leftists try to argue that we should ignore identity politics altogether and focus on class struggle. And it always struck me as such a privileged and out-of-touch take
But I like Alex's idea of "don't ignore identity issues to prioritize the larger fight, realize that they're all the same fight"
@@RobinRaye-np3vwCuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos were all successful, but you know better.
@@aesop1451 I fail to see how that has anything to do with what I said
@@RobinRaye-np3vw Intersectionality has never fought and won a revolution that changed the entire society. Remember, the economic base shapes and maintains the superstructure. The fact that neoliberal politicians and big businesses support LGBTQ supports the possibility that these movements are not the vehicle for radical change. But Marxism-Leninism gets demonized everyday by all sides.
What perplexes me the most about postmodernist desconstruction of truth is how often it stops right before reaching a grounding realisation.
Like, why obsess about not having one ultimate perfect truth and thinking that the alternative is the void? I am a STEM researcher. There is no "true" definition of, for example, species. We use different definitions for different situations and argue about the edge cases. It's still an extremely useful concept used for "hard" science.
I feel like your conclusion, especially, would be served by the realisation that multiple truths is a good thing, actually. It's a reflection of the fundamental need for both democracy and conflict. As you sort of implied, a society without conflict is most likely a society without freedom.
YES EXACTLY thank you for articulating this i am also a stem researcher much love ❤
Omg I feel safe here
A society without conflict is the freest society there is.
@@8is It's literally impossible to have a society without conflict unless you enact dystopian levels of control. Which is fundamentally the opposite of freedom. The point of freedom is that people will disagree, and that will lead to conflict as long as we're living in a society and interacting with others.
@@ekki1993 No, freedom is simply the absence of aggressive force.
"You think people make choices? No, people THINK they make choices. They think they're gonna steer right, or steer left... but they didn't build the roads." -Mr. Moses, The Unsleeping City
If you enjoyed this video, I sincerely think you should check out Dimension 20's "The Unsleeping City". The American Dream and all it entails is a core theme and the section here about what freedom even IS and the categories that are enforced and deemed normal in order to exert control over the "abnormal" made me think of that quote
All of d20 goes hard, but The Unsleeping City is one of those series that fucks especially hard. Love those goobers so much.
@@ItsAllNunya I need to catch up on Never Stop Blowing Up. I've seen a few clips that left me saying Dang haha
External circumstances may restrict the range of options available to us in any given situation, but that doesn't mean we don't have the freedom to choose within the context of those restrictions. For example, a maze may have a predetermined layout, but how I navigate that layout is based on my own decisions and internal reasoning.
See the reason he said that is because he ordered the building of the roads. He never accounted for the people getting dynamite.
this is cool and all but how does this information help anyone live confidently or maintain a meaningful sense of agency? i know it's about being "real" but this kind of sentiment makes it sound like people should just stop trying to live as if the rest of the world will live their life for them without their input which doesn't really make sense. if we had no influence over our own lives in face of external pressures then we wouldn't be people; the roads have been there from the beginning, the point we're at now is a direct result of the direction the people before us took. it's naive to believe anyone before us had some form of limitless freedom in constructing the institutions that restrict ours today, or that we are not also a form of nature in our own right shaping itself by having the capacity to act. i mean i understand the intellectual and philosophical appeal of a deterministic outlook like this i just don't understand the overall political practicality of leaning so heavily into this pattern of thought. maybe i'm not interpreting the quote correctly?
This is perhaps the best video essay I’ve seen in years. It masterfully touches on so many areas of politics, philosophy, doomerism, and leftist infighting.
As a Hamilton fan I’ve grown appreciation for Miranda’s work, and as a leftist, I feel inspired to get involved in local politics.
Easiest like & subscribe of my life
also as a fellow sociology person let me say nothing was ever more radicalizing to me as a leftist as the maps of crime rates, poverty, and racial segregation that still happens here. And I went to college in the 00s
Same, I'm not even a sociologist I'm a geologist. One lab I had introduced us to GIS using maps literally identical to the income map shown in the video, I wouldn't be surprised if that's where he found it. I believe the location we looked at in particular was Philidelphia. The assignment's focus was on noticing the correlation of income with locations of bike stations, bus stops, universities, etc. Not as jarring as the segregation maps but it definitely spurred me to look further into stuff like that. The closest major city to me is Detroit and that map is NOT pretty
im a teenager, this is the most eye opening video essay I've ever watched frame to frame. I've never felt more empowered as someone who can make a change. Problem is I struggle to see how I can get my hands in the movement as a teenager. Does anyone have any tips? I also live in BC and the resources I've seen are mostly from the U.S. Im tired of engaging in meaningless internet discourse that forces me to stew in the shittiness of it all, this video helped me realize I can do so much more to help people, and as corny as it sounds help the world. Any direction would be great.
Eric Liu's short video on civics/social power: th-cam.com/video/c_Eutci7ack/w-d-xo.html
What do you care about? What do you notice can change for the better? It can be a seemingly small thing like biodegradable garbage segregation (that only some neighborhoods in my city have a policy about so it all goes to the same landfill anyway-but widespread policies on that can lay an infrastructure for when recycling plants do get implemented), or letter-writing campaigns to local government representatives to encourage when they follow through with a good policy (such as drawing a hardline on developing urban sprawl into protected rainforests).
As a teenager, you can start a school club about your concerns, or contribute articles to your school newspaper, or join the student council if you want to practice by shaping school policy.
You can start small and concrete, it doesn't have to be like a teenaged crusade to lower the minimum required voting age that gets passed tomorrow. Lower voting age would be great everywhere, but I think that's connected to too many youth emancipation conditions like financial literacy and functional emancipation from whatever in loco parentis policies are put on the information that you are working with. So if you can't vote now, there's still other simpler and more effective things that you can do. You don't have to solve absolutely everything wrong with the world all the time by tomorrow. You can choose one small thing. You can even decide this is the era of your life that you're going to read more on the causes that interest you, instead of getting kettled at protests and discovering later that you needed a permit to do that or something. Or you can do both at a 70/30 division of your free time-I don't know your life!
"First person to move is gay" after a 30 min rant about existentialism caught me off guard 😂
"Log off right now and do something" - it is currently 2am, I should be asleep.
I will do something tomorrow!
Sleeping is doing something!
Like honestly, getting enough sleep is probably one of the most consistently helpful things we can do to act on change. I notice how much more effective and proactive I can be when I'm not sleep-deprived.
Very minor correction, Paris had dealt with multiple revolutions since the 1790s and the ushering in of the fourth republic was actually 98 years after the Paris commune so “for the first time since it’s founding revolution” is a bit inaccurate but obv who cares
Hey Alex, I've been watching your channel for a little over two years now, and I think this far and away your best video. From your analysis to the editing and art styles to humor...everything is just...so good. I hope you're relatively post-hole now!
Also: I recommend reading more anarchists. Prefigurative anarchy on a community to community level is a solution-framework that balances positive-right liberalism and socialist communalism within the confines of the super structure above. Essentially: practice a politics of harmonious mutualism in your backyard to insulate you and your community from the inevitable cycles of capital and the rise and fall of populist totalitarians or neoliberal apathy.
That's an interesting concept. I normally dislike anarchist ideas because I'll see people talking about forming anarchist nations and the whole thing sounds so detached from reality to me, and I can almost instantly identify problems with their conceptualizations
But a smaller, local anarchist group coming together to support and protect one another as a way of mitigating the impacts of a broad uncaring state? . . . That could work
I'm arguably already participating in some version of that just by being an active member in my local queer community. Very interesting
@@RobinRaye-np3vw I totally get the general apprehension about anarchy. I was very skeptical until I started reading political theory. If you'd like to learn more and not be deep in the weeds of a writer like Kropotkin or Bakunin, I'd highly recommend anarchist analysis from "Andrewism" on TH-cam and the idea of "library socialism" from the "Srsly Wrong" podcast (a bit more pragmatic praxis).
I will say...any purported anarchist arguing in favor of a "nation" likely doesn't understand the function of anarchy. Anarchy is the gradual building of community, consensus, mutualism, and transformative justice within a small to medium-sized community such that hierarchy of any kind is rendered impossible or, if necessary, tightly reigned in by virtue of distributing power somehow (for instance, in the case of an industrial bicycle facility in competitive anarcho-syndicalism the amount a higher ranking job in an industrial plant earns is capped at a number arrived at by consensus of the workers of the bike company). The whole idea of anarchist organization balks at the idea that any group needs a leader or structural ideology and that it is possible to organize ourselves in productive ways without the threat of violence from above or toward each other. It is a synthesis of radical hope and optimism in our fellow human beings, direct efforts to build horizontal power via self-sufficiency, and detaching ourselves from the idea of ownership as much as we can.
All of this can occur as "prefigurative politics" in the current world. Essentially, we can practice this style of politicking every day even if we are forced to live under the remnants of neoliberal capitalism, likely currently shifting into "technofeudalism." We can build, in microscale, whatever we have the capacity to imagine. Queer spaces are an excellent ground for experimentation in this effort.
there is this clip of Lin Manuel Miranda at SNL where he stops walking in a hallway when he sees a picture of trump and starts to sing "well he's never gonna be president now" from Hamilton after some scandal came out, and then he became president anyway. That video always feels like a key moment in the shift of the optimism of this era for me
Lol and the erb of trump vs Hillary. They went so hard for Hillary that it’s so cringe to watch now
@@justinhamilton8647I never even bothered with ERB's Harris v Trump vid because of that.
This is such a reassuring and hopeful video in ways that I could not have expected- incredibly grounded leftist analysis and call to action. I spend a lot of time bouncing between online "leftist" spaces, a well meaning but intensely liberal postmodern institution of employment, and some local leftist organizations when I'm able to access them. All of these people are well meaning and all of them are variously frustrating to work with, but over time I have grown increasingly exhausted of the paralytic performativity and shaming of online movements and the absolute unwillingness of the specific onsessed institution to allow connections to be drawn and universalities to be located. Both can feel so intensely hopeless, at their worst boxing down groups to their smallest and most isolated parts in the pursuit of understanding and creating a view of the world where the oppressed have no allies in the world and are incapable of seeking understanding with one another. I do not like many people in my local orgs, but the reminder of focused material action is a powerful antidote to that sense of powerlessness. I know I have a long way to go in the field of Doing Something, but this has been a powerful reminder of why it's worth putting in the work to go farther, even if it will never be flawless and even if it's only something small. So thank you for that.
If you further investigate Marx, you'll get some answers for why liberalism can be revolutionarily progressive (in some respects) at one point in history but end up being reactionary later on. Liberalism was not revolutionary because it represented some eternal truth and goodness that drove people to fight for it (though we should also remember liberalism was more the philosophy of the revolts' leadership, its beneficiaries), liberalism was revolutionary because it outlined a system of ideas that, relative to those of feudalism and absolute monarchy, were progressive in a way that was expedient to the emergent power of the proto-bourgeoisie. This created a new edifice that society is now struggling to break through.
thinking of that scene from Veep where Jonah calls Hamilton the first Puerto Rican president
jfc
If Hamilton was boricua i'm a tostón
@@caffetielFair, but I think the more glaring flaw is that. Uh. He was never the president at all lmao
@@WingedNumbat debatable lol I didn't even get that far in the sentence
here you go, you've done it once again. constantly raising the bar for everyone else. just wow, congrats. the effort does not go unnoticed
I felt like I was in a dream world with how I could not get in to even the idea of Hamilton but everyone around me seemed to not be able to shut up about it.
The short answer is just that Hamilton is perfect.
Hamilton is definitely not without its flaws that I believe distort history but I actually got to be one of the first people to ever see it live while it was still off broadway and it was a once in a lifetime experience. The version we saw had much more dialogue between songs and went on for a super long time but it was something truly breathtaking and a work of passion in its earliest days. I’m not even a huge fan of Hamilton, probably haven’t listened to it in years but I was 13 and the time and I remember crying huge tears when hamilton’s son died in the play. All the actors except for Jonathan Groff came out at the end and we got to chit chat and take pictures with Lin Manuel Miranda, super early in his career, and he was telling us how the show was about to go to broadway. Hamilton has some moments that deeply misunderstand history and culture, but I still don’t think that writes off its important cultural impact. It was a cultural landmark that in my opinion marked a changing world at the time in 2016 and I think will be remembered as the end of that 2010-2016 era, the only problem is I also think it also contributed to a mythical distortion of the founding fathers historg
I literally choked on my coffee in the first 5 minutes with the "ov-in the food" joke
It's a very old tweet but Alex killed the reading of it lmao
Garfield's infinite monday
This is the first time I've heard it said aloud and I finally get the joke 😭
Coworker humor
I've been thinking for a while now about how Hamilton was the last gasp of artistic political idealism, the second 2016 happened it became impossible for future generations to even remotely tap into where that show was coming from. Looking at it now feels like looking at a fossil and it's not even ten years old. It had blinders on about a lot of things in the same way a loooot of Americans did but there's still solid fundamentals there (and a fundamentally good, if entirely fictional, story) which makes the whole thing sadder. On the flip side, Hadestown turned out to be freakishly prescient. Needless to say I am SEATED for this, thank you Alex.
"Song of the Magi" by Anaïs Mitchell. I think she's just Like that, casually prophesying stuff.
I would've sworn Hamilton is from 2014. 2016 seems like an utterly bizarre year for it to have been released.
@@TuesdaysArt it swept the 2016 Tony Awards, but that doesn't mean the show wasn't drumming up a fandom the year before and in the months leading up to that; "the second 2016 happened" was in like...November, not January of that year, so I think it's not so strange to recognize that the 2016 vibe actually was that. The entirety of the 70th Annual Tony Awards is an interesting capture of what the mood was because nobody knew what was about to happen on a government level.
I think Hamilton will always be relevant just because it's tied to America and how we view it changes almost every single year.
Even today, with Biden stepping down sort of calls back to the song One Last Time and the idea of legacy and what that means for anybody going forward
A quote from Zizek’s substack on why Trump won:
“It’s not that complicated to see why Trump won. Here’s a quote from his RNC acceptance speech:
“We are often told that being an American is about being dedicated to a collection of abstractions and buzzwords: democracy…freedom…tolerance….multiculturalism…But a nation based on "freedom" is just another place to go shopping. It's a country for everyone…and thus a country for no one…it's a country in which we ourselves have become strangers. Man doesn't live, and man doesn't die, for abstractions like "freedom." Man lives and dies for a homeland…for a people and its future…for beauty…for the power of being part of something bigger than one's self…”
I got halfway through this video when my partner came home from work last night. I guess like many, I became disenchanted with Hamilton as the world turned uglier, or maybe I just became more educated on the ugliness that has always been here & some of its root causes which this play glosses over or even glorifies.
But as I'm listening to Hamilton again, I'm caring for the 5-month-old son I had with a man who was orphaned as a child. Who left everything he knew to walk thousands of miles in search of a better life, than what he'd suffered under a dictator backed by France for several decades and counting, on a new continent and survived horrors beyond most of our comprehension in doing so. A man who is a prodigious and gifted songwriter in several different languages despite only having had access to 7 years of formal education. And will possibly never receive the opportunity to realise his potential thanks to the traumas and limitations inflicted by the ideology Hamilton espouses. It sure hits different.
If only LMM had put those skills to use writing a musical about someone like Sankara. But who am I kidding? That never would have made it to Broadway
I just got back into nostalgically listening to Hamilton recently and have been thinking a lot about it’s politics and it’s place in the time it came out. Really excited to see your take!
Outstanding work, once again, Alexander. And I gotta shout out your sets, framing, and music. Your entire production is 👌🏼
Alt Title: JUST DO IT, DON'T LET YOUR DREAM BE DREAMS
Don't dream it; be it
Not all the way thru the video but I know I will have an interesting time and look forward to it. What I wanted to say right off the bat is your film making skills are really really really great. I wish I could be more articulate. I enjoy the variety of sets with the thematic through-line, your delivery, and attention to detail.
The visual theme of this visual seems to be very 70s inspired, perhaps 60s. I'm super into it and that's what prompted me to comment. The "yellow" in your video seems to be a recent nostalgic theme from our parents' and grandparents' homes.
im only a few minutes in. but i really appreciate the upgraded cinematography here. a lot of work went into each of these shots and it shows. great work!
As a Turkish, a.k.a. not an American, I'm surprised how all the things you say can be applied to Turkey's left as well. It's probably the same for lots of other countries too. This is truly a great take on global left as a whole.
Not me looking at the trojan horse on the table, expecting it to become relevant.
Is liberalism a trojan horse for the ideals of the status quo? Is Hamilton a trojan horse for liberalism? Was PROMESA a trojan horse for neocolonial pillage? Was this video a trojan horse for a reminder that Thomas Jefferson Miku binder exists?
I think Hamilton is the Trojan horse for the other ideas in the video
Thank you for breaking the news early in my watching of the video, now I'll stop wondering 😅
I remember how weird this culture shift was in real time. From the musical blowing up in 2015-16 to the 2020 pro-shot, the difference in reception was huge. The musical came out when I was in middle school, so I assumed it was just a “growing up” thing that I didn’t enjoy it as much in 2020 as I did listening to the 2015 cast recording soon after it dropped. I had already gotten sick of the music by 2017, when I had the privilege to see it in Chicago, but even then I wasn’t very critical of the show itself. But it wasn’t until thinkpieces about Hamilton surfaced in the wake of the pro-shot on Disney did I realize that it wasn’t just me growing up or overplaying the music-the culture had changed. Mind you, I wasn’t part of the online fandom outside of watching some animatics and original cast interviews/performances, so I doubt I had the whiplash that a lot of other people my age got. But wow, was it a sign of the times.
DUDE I'M GONNA FUCKING LOVE THIS
Colonial history is an early special interest of mine (live in Virginia) and I really adored Hamilton for a long time, but so much of what it is and what it represents is so counter to how I view history (especially after reading the book *"An Indigenous People's History of the United States"* recently) and I don't really know how I 'should' feel about it anymore. My heart wants to jump to defend it, because it's so good artistically and I have so many good memories of it (Listening to it in the car with my dad all the time, going to see it live in DC post covid) but my brain says I know enough that I probably shouldn't try.
Anyway point being I always look forward to your videos, but with this topic I know it's gonna be an absolute banger!
EDIT: That bit about Lin saying the musical is kind of also about/for writers also hits me hard because I'm a writer at heart too. Hurricane is probably my favorite song in a personal capacity, I understand the perspective and rationalization of Hamilton (the character) so much in that song.
Additionally, I understand if this won't be discussed in the video but Lin (and by extention his depiction of the character of Hamilton) resonates with me as VERY adhd, idk if he's ever talked about it publicly though. There's a lot of ways Lin's version of Hamilton mirrors my own personality, both in his strengths and flaws. That's overall a good thing though, because it allows me to reflect on my own assumptions as well as not make similar mistakes in my own life to Hamilton (the character)
The thing that annoys me about the discussion of american liberal policy is that it usually ignores the existence of All Other Countries (except for a vague recollection of communism/russia/ussr). Like. There are other countries out there. A lot of them are doing better than the USA. It would be interesting to look at those examples and see what can be learned from them & how to implement those changes
But its easier and less work to only look at america (which is only the usa and no other countries) and Wait For The Glorious Revolution
I mean, part of it is that the USA basically has systematically stamped out alternatives to US culture. We should look to other countries that are doing leftist policy better, but at the end of the day the US only persists when there is absolutely no left countries left. And the fact that we let them happen is more a function of the US being too caught up in its own issues rather than the ability for the US to stamp out non-US culture.
I don’t say, “moment of truth” before I eat food, I say “bottoms up” and cheers the taco
Yeah I found that odd. Maybe we just interact with different white people but I've never seen anyone use "moment of truth" like that
@@RobinRaye-np3vwIt’s very popular to label white people as “corny” or “goofy.” They can’t dance, rap, season they food, be sincere political activists, jump, or anything otherwise known as “cool”.
this might be the only video essay I've seen in six months that actually is saying real things and is funny.
With Hamilton we reached peak cringe, it died for musical theatres sins and now the genre is wiped clean
Learning to live with Hamilton helped me learn to live with my own internal cringe
Cringe is the status quo. It is the anti-queer. I am become divergent. I looked into the cringe void and saw nothing but a mirror of insecurity meant to stall me on my journey. Reject the oppressive force of the norm. Avoid the Noid.
It’s not cringe. It’s a masterpiece musical.
@@BeansPredi-ch6xk porque no los dos?
@@BeansPredi-ch6xkcan you name a musical theater masterpiece that is cringe free?
Oh thank god for telling people to Log Off and Touch Grass in a kind way that also namedrops multiple genuinely useful organizations (2/3 of which I have volunteered for myself! And are excellent big-tent first involvement pass options)
Im having a shit day at work n im watching this on my lunch and chanting "post-hole post-hole post-hole!!" Is the first thing that has made me crack a smile today soooooo thank you very much, very inspirational heartwarming educational other good algo words thank you thank you thank you
I NEEDED this in my life. My soul YEARNED for a Hamilton restrospective because the more I age, the more I start to find it disingenuous at times. 😅
Wait how am I able to watch this? I thought it wouldn’t be out till tomorrow? 💀 Also, i should sleep but watching this video is so much better
Fr
I unlisted it and accidentally put it on a playlist which gives those who find it access 🤫
I went to bed after writing the comment out of respect and because I was really tired but I will continue watching this masterpiece now, thank you for all the work you put into the videos!! 🫡
@@alexander_avila omg i feel like i got lucky now
@@alexander_avilawe've all been blessed by your mistake lol
I've referred to Hamilton as the last gasp of American exceptionalism so the title alone for this cuts so hard. Love it.
Get out of my brain, I hate parasocial isms but I do feel like I'm in conversation with you watching this. Thank you thank you thank you. You've given voice to so many emotions I've felt and tried to articulate (to minimal avail) for so long. Thanks for the structural analysis cheats, hoping to help construct post hole discourse post grad with this as inspiration !!!
I was obsessed with Hamilton for about a year and a half starting in 2016. I was seventeen. The post-obsession shame was so intense, I couldn’t look at, listen to, or watch anything related to it until this year because of its reputation online. I watched it on Disney+ for the first time this fourth of July, and it hurt my heart and brain how much it was still ingrained in me. I don't know how to feel about it. Will update when I finish watching.
edit: okay, the amount of thought, consideration, and nuance in this video is staggering. I feel empowered, I think. There are things to be done, and I am capable of contributing. That's what matters.
I am not a bad person for having had a fixation on a flawed thing. Thinking that way only makes me feel powerless, and who does that serve? Not my community, not myself.
Will I watch Hamilton again? Maybe. It has value and merit as well as huge blind spots. But I'll try not to shrink away from it anymore.
Oh my god not even one minute in and "why do they call it oven" appears, I love you man I swear I mean it
its my personal headcannon that your home has amazing interior design cause damn the sets look so hot (good wasn't enough of a descriptor for how much i acc love the dressing)
I'm a leftist guilty of loving Hamilton, still loving to hear any criticism of it because it's always correct, but at the same time I simply love it.
Starting at the 2:00:00 mark starts the best critique of online leftism I've ever heard. Thank you. As a Nicaraguan living in Costa Rica this election truly impacts not only the US, but many of us in Latin America trapped within the decisions of US politicians.
Once again another banger of a video essay. Nothing really gets me thinking about stuff like your videos. Also I love how it's kinda like a full circle moment for your channel. I remember watching the are they gay for Hamilton x Laurens. Although it's probably not full circle because you've made stuff before and will make stuff after and i only think that bc it was one of the videos I really liked of yours back then. Idk whatever, chef's kiss. 10/10
philosophy tube AND alexander avila in one day?!?!?! holy shit two cakes!!!!!!
I thought exactly this!
Philosophy Tube is at best a social democrat.
Hey! I liked this video but I had some critiques I wanted to share. In your section on the reality of the American Revolution you argue that the heart of the revolution, the truly aspirational element, was the multiracial motley crew. I think there is some validity to this but on the whole it is inadequate and overstated. Multiracial coalitions of revolutionaries in large numbers I would argue really dissipated after Bacon’s Rebellion when colonial aristocracy recognized the threat of indentured servants and slaves joining together and persued a move towards deepening slavery and away from indentured servitude. But, I think it’s important to recognize this coalition was not universally inclusive, Bacon’s rebellion itself set off by anti-Native settler sentiment and the desire to expand in to territory that Natives held and was protected by the British crown. Black and white coalitions could still very much be opposed to Natives. While Black people and Natives fought on both sides of the American revolution, but more Black people fought for the British and the reasons they fought for the respective sides had to do more with personal economic opportunity for freedom than enlightenment conceptions of liberty and democracy. Natives too fought on both sides of the revolution in substantial roles because they were trying to utilize the conflict between the colonies and Great Britain to dominate other native tribes they felt in more competition with and to ensure access to trade with European settlers. Your argument, while not the same, and certainly backed by more substantial evidence, reminds me more of confederate sympathizers claims that the Confederacy wasn’t driven by slavery because in a few instances Black people for individual reasons fought on the side of the Confederacy. I think your earlier analysis was much more apt when you described human rights as originating from flawed enlightenment ideals. Revolution and liberty are also products of flawed enlightenment ideas.
I’d argue that actually your original point about the aristocratic revolutionaries being entrenched in a racist system of profiteering is applicable to the lower class white men who rebelled largely due to their desire for more land and fears of slave revolt, which were inextricably linked with economic independence and political representation. The revolution was not inspired by the Enlightenment so much as economic opportunity that came at the expense of Black people and Natives. Look at the Declaration of Independence to see grievances listed about internal rebellion (slave revolt) and British alignment with natives. Overlooked in your analysis is the aftermath of Seven Years’ War. In order to prevent further conflict, Britain imposed the Proclamation Line of 1763 which restricted settlers moving westward, angering common colonists who were in America for the opportunity to gain wealth and prestige (British alignment with Natives was one of the biggest causes of the American Revolution- see Bacon’s Rebellion). Additionally, the taxes imposed to recoup costs became the subject of immense anger by American colonists, elite and common who felt there was an intrusion on de facto homerule, economic stifling, inherent unfair taxation that amounted to theft because of America’s status of a colony dependent on Britain for economic growth, and a lack of political representation in Britain despite seeing themselves as full citizens of the British Empire.
Your argument about the American Revolution basically is that a multiracial revolution of enlightenment ideals was co-opted and suppressed by aristocratic colonists who wanted to maintain elite control over the territories. Essentially, a political revolution was stopped by economic interest. I disagree with this. I’d argue that a mutual economic interest between common white Americans and the local aristocracy (as well as a proxy war with France! and British entanglements elsewhere) is what powered the American Revolution and this revolution resulted in embryonic republican and democratic institutions based on the ideals of economic independence and political representation that would grow to be the commendable legacy of the American Revolution. Essentially, exclusionary economic motivation drove the formation of evolutionary political institutions. In order to preserve the economic order, Americans created a new political order, expanding on the idea of popular sovereignty and the role of democracy in government, but this liberalization was built upon racism and chattel slavery (I found your argument about human rights being derived from flawed European enlightenment ideals persuasive and a helpful basis for understanding how America could entrench its racism while growing more democratic). Just as human rights are the conception and product of european institutional thought, so are the democratizing and revolutionary effort of the american revolution.
I think here is a good moment to compare the American Revolution with the French and Haitian Revolutions. I agree with you that while obviously both also had a basis in economic motivation, both were driven primarily by more enlightenment philosophy, which to many make them more laudable. However, if you look at how these revolutions ended, you see one turn to terror to dictator (who reimposed slavery) to monarchy, and the other turn towards aristocracy and economic instability. The actual institutions that arose from these revolutions failed, their enlightenment underpinnings failing to hold their weight. In contrast, America’s government survived, incredibly imperfect, but more representative than the governments that preceded it, and capable of sustainable, if slow, change (although importantly not on the question of slavery). My views of the American Revolution is basically, it realized some of the enlightenment ideals sustainably because it was based on economic realities, which constrained the realization of enlightenment ideals. Importantly, the two driving parties of the American Revolution, the common citizens and the aristocracy, both supported a racist society that offered no hope for Black emancipation and Native sovereignty (and that the British while arguably less cruel and more aligned with minorities than their American counterparts also did not represent Black or Native interests). Furthermore, American conception of liberty was predicated on white supremacy. My views of the subsequent revolutions can basically be summarized as the French and Haitian Revolutions were more innovative philosophically (and based in more expansive notions of racial equality) but unable to materially significantly benefit their populations and fulfill the ideals their leaders espoused.
If you are interested in discussing further let me know! I have a few thoughts on portions of your video I haven’t touched upon but I’ve written enough.
I also wanted to say that while most of this comment is criticism there’s obviously a lot in this video I agree with but that’s just less helpful to talk about. In particular I thought your analysis of human rights and enlightenment ideals and the successes of Hamilton’s rhetoric at the end of the video particularly persuasive.
P.S. You mention the essay, “The End of History?” I don’t agree with everything in this essay but I think it is very misunderstood and often referenced when people are pointing to it and critiquing liberalism. I think you argue the essay essentially says that the neoliberal world order had triumphed and you then point to war and economic inequality and whatnot to prove that it hasn’t and that neoliberals are naïve (again, I’m not a neoliberal I just disagree with this interpretation). Fukuyama argues the 20th century was based upon the competition of Communism and Capitalism and that in the USSR’s collapse and China’s movement away from Marxist-Leninism, communism has been discredited while Capitalism prevails. Fukuyama then argues that history devoid of conflict between big ideas and philosophies will be fundamentally stagnant and comprised of many petty conflicts. In turn, Fukuyama suggests that the prospect of this bleak future may inspire new ideologies to challenge the neoliberal world order.
i appreciate this response (and the video for providing a focus for discourse)
He doesn’t care. Non-whites good, whites bad.
👏 very insightful!
Abigail and Alexander posted. What a day!
Thank you so much for this. The message was grounding for me in more ways than I can articulate. I just reached out to some local community orgs that I admire. Hopefully they have some ways I can volunteer and help organize. I want to do something.
This video is excellent. I always love your vids, but from 14:10-14:30, that was the smoothest ad transition I have ever seen!!
has anyone else noticed that alexanders audio is much quieter than all of the other clips included in this video or is it just me?
amazing amazing video im obsessed you have answered all of the questions i have in my mind all the time while walking through this amerikkkan hellscape ...
you are so smart alexander!!!! thank you for sharing yourself with the internet- you are doing us all a great service
wake up Alexander Avila posted
Can’t even say ‘babe,’ because it’s sexist 😂
♪ Alexander Avila ♪
♪ Alexander Avila ♪
♪ We were waiting in our sleep for you ♪
Wow, Alexander! Wow! You are amazing!
I wrote a longer comment listing what I value about your essay and what it made me think, but I am internet shy, so I deleted it.
However, please know that I find beautiful and precious your intelligence, generosity, optimism, and non-judgmental disposition.
Thank you! And greetings from Colombia!
¡Hasta la próxima!
Can’t believe you chose to parody the world was wide enough and say “there are three things you need to know” at 1:53:03 when the line “and I realize three fundamental truths at the exact same time” from satisfied was RIGHT THERE smh
I'm an hour in and I love everything about this. You're verbalizing so much of what had always felt was off about our country and how we've formed human societies. The idea that "human" is a construct of the government is a fascinating idea that makes a lot of sense. You and cjthex inspire me artistically and intellectually so much, I actually feel capable of doing something instead of utterly hopeless and helpless.
I'm only halfway through but I'm already really enjoying this one ! It sums up pretty quickly and efficiently a lot of things I've read during my studies, and I like your willingness to confront the sociology-driven existential crisis.
I like the way your argument links the philosophical to the political, and the analysis of populism as the reaction to the failures of liberalism it often is. Feeling pretty enlightened rn.
This is one of the most thought provoking video essays I’ve seen in so long. You lay out your arguments with such care and substance. Fantastic work Alex