I Prefer Burr

Like almost all families too careful to go out on the Fourth of July and too cowardly to set off fireworks from home, we watched Hamilton this Saturday. I’d heard all the songs before, but never in order, so as much as I already loved the music, I didn’t really understand the shape of the narrative until I saw it. For example, I’d always assumed that Aaron Burr’s song “Wait for It” came in-between his escalating threats to Hamilton in “Your Obedient Servant” and their duel in “The World was Wide Enough” as a way to explain the villain’s motivation before he kills the hero. But it’s actually one of the first songs, and in the context of the entire story, it doesn’t describe his essential nature as a character (as I’d assumed at first), but his initial philosophy, from which he grows and changes. He starts out patient, willing to restrain himself and wait for his chance, but his envy of Hamilton’s seemingly effortless success pushes him to imitate Hamilton’s recklessness without forming corresponding principles, which in turn leads him to rage and murder. As much as Hamilton is the center of attention, he’s really a static character throughout the show: he’s always ambitious and passionate, always puts his political career above family or friendship, and not even his public humiliation and his son’s death can teach him the restraint he needs to step away from the duel with Burr. As charismatic as Hamilton is, in the end I identify with Burr more for how much he changes over the course of the story. Sometimes that malleability is for the worst; his famous flaw is his inability to commit to any issue he truly cares about. But it also gives him the ability to reflect and apologize at the story’s end. For all his wit, Hamilton never has that sort of introspection.

I tried explaining all this to my mom, but she didn’t really get it. She understood where I drew my argument, but she told me she couldn’t see Burr in quite the same way because the real history is so much more complicated. For context, she has a PhD in history and has taught college classes on this time period for years, so she knows well as anyone what sort of person Aaron Burr really was. And yes, he did regret killing Hamilton later in life, but after the duel he didn’t exactly calm down. His main project after the murder was trying to get a chunk of Louisiana to secede from the union, something that goes completely unmentioned in the musical. 

This brings up an interesting question: does history matter to Hamilton? Can you enjoy Burr’s character, knowing that the pensive and reformed man you see at the end isn’t the whole truth? I tend to answer yes on that question, and my mom tends to answer no, and our respective statuses as an English major and a history professor probably explain a lot of our positions. But Hamilton is a more interesting place to interrogate this question than most historical fiction. On one hand it dismisses any pretense of being a historical enactment quite blatantly, featuring rapping founding fathers and casting slave owners and unapologetic racists like Thomas Jefferson with black actors. But it also puts so much emphasis on the mostly true historical narrative that you can’t divorce it from history easily either. 

The solution, I think, is that the plot is meant to be more than a retelling or a story. The characters are meant to be more than recreations or constructions from the author’s imaginations. It’s a commentary on the American founding, not on how it actually was, but how it’s remembered. The contradictions and holes in the story matter just as much as the places where it coheres beautifully. This is most obvious on the broadest thematic level: a celebration of America’s promise of equality and opportunity, with sly asides showing how those promises have never been fully delivered to women or people of color. The truths oppose each other, but neither are negated. 

The same is true on an individual level too. Burr was the introspective, remorseful man whose rage came from a mistaken but deeply human place, as well as a liar and traitor who never really learned his lesson. Human minds are always messy and compromised, after all, no more loyal to our highest ideals or defined by our lowest crimes than national histories.

COVID Numbness

So I’m embarrassed of my homestate yet again: COVID cases are way up in Texas after a premature and poorly advised reopening. They’re not alone: despite some states staying in shelter-and-place and keeping numbers low, the U.S. is facing a COVID explosion even more extreme than the days when the virus was just taking off. And it’s only getting worse.

Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder what’s wrong with these people. Not that I’ve been perfect about social distancing: I went on a few non-essential errands when businesses first opened up in Minnesota and don’t always move six feet out of the way when I pass someone on my run if they trail is too narrow. But how can you go to a bar when COVID has claimed nearly 130,000 live? How can anyone be so stupid?

There’s an Onion headline from a few years back: “42 Million Killed in Bloodiest Black Friday on Record.” A website called “Literally Unbelievable” archives Facebook posts that mistakenly share Onion headlines as legit, and this one has far and away the most incidents. Of course it’s ridiculous; how could more than ten percent of the U.S. population trample each other in a special sales event? But, glancing at that headline, doesn’t it make some sort of sense, at least for an instant? The reason why, I think, is that articles about Black Friday deaths start with a premise so bizarre and tragic that we can’t really engage with them, and most of the time we refuse to even try. We believe that it’s true, but hold that fact at arm’s distance to keep our mind at ease. With our willingly warped perception, the Onion can ratchet up the death toll to absurdly high levels and many people don’t even notice.

Aside from misleading media, I think that this phenomena is why reasonable people haven’t taken the pandemic seriously: the scale of tragedy is so enormous that no one can comprehend it, and from there it’s an easy step to apathy and denial. This isn't unique to people who refuse to wear masks; we all do limit our empathy, and most of the time it’s a good thing. After all, if we treated each death we heard about with more than cursory grief, we’d never have the strength to read a newspaper, much less a history book. Even those of us who take prevention seriously can’t pretend to feel the weight of each death as if it were new. If we did, then forget wearing a mask or staying six feet apart. We wouldn’t be able to leave our homes, if not from fear then from pain*.

With this all in mind, it becomes easier to understand people who disregard the pandemic. At this point, everyone is sick to death of being alone with limited activities, and if the danger is only an abstract and arbitrary number, then why not go to a bar?

I’ve seen a lot of well-intentioned people online (since that’s the only place I can see strangers communicate these days) try to convince COVID downplayers by citing the death toll over and over and over again. I’m not in the habit of getting into internet fights, so I’m really not one to say, but I’d recommend taking a different tact. Cite personal narratives of those who have lost loved ones to COVID instead. Sometimes this feels wrong; it’s certainly illogical. After all, a death is a death, whether you know the name or not, and focusing your attention on one story obscures the fact that there are too many stories to possibly tell. But the fact is that none of us are wholly logical, and to us, a death isn’t a death without a name. The way to force these statistics to shrink is to make them more than statistics.

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* By the way, I'm not saying that people who haven't worn masks or social distanced have done nothing wrong. They made their own choices and are responsible for the consequences. I just want to point out that their decisions aren't too far removed from the way any of us think.