The original question that spawned this thread was not “why do libs like a show like that?” It was “why would you create a show like that?” I’m a huge fan of Hamilton (I’ve somehow managed to ignore its horrendous politics) and can answer this question.

Lin Manuel Miranda is a second generation immigrant who spent a month out of every year in Puerto Rico as a child. His parents are both first generation, a psychiatrist and a lawyer who consults for the Democratic Party. So he very much grew up upper middle class in an immigrant household. In parts of the “making of” book for Hamilton, he comments on the conversation Hamilton and Burr have about a street getting renamed after someone. Manuel remarks about how he overheard conversations like this about legacy from his father. This is the world he grew up in. People who knew that history books would contain the names of their families.

So you have a Latino kid who is essentially living the American Dream, but he’s brown and doesn’t see himself reflected in America’s creation myths (weird, that). He reads a biography of founding father Alexander Hamilton (as one does) and this biography happens to paint Hamilton in a very favorable light. So much so that Miranda writes an entire arc about Hamilton’s crusade against slavery that was cut for time but still has some remnants in the show. I think Miranda related to this guy who was kind of in between two worlds and wanted to draw the parallels.

And frankly it was very funny to watch chuds melt down over the show refusing to cast any white people so they made the on white role the most insufferable and incompetent guy in the entire play who gets shot within minutes.

I think it really does say a lot that Lin Manuel got picked up by the Obama administration for that poetry night too. Just in case anyone thought this musical couldn’t get any more lib, here’s a remix of George Washington’s farewell song with his final letter read by Obama