Posted: 11/21/16 at 2:27pm
Back Row said: I've said this before on this thread, and I'll keep saying it: There are much bigger issues at play than whether the behavior of the Hamilton cast is appropriate or not. First of all, we have the President elect behaving like a child, still seizing every opportunity to sow division whenever he can, despite his phony claims that he wants to "unite us". And secondly, and more importantly, with demands like "apologize!" and "equal time!", he is inciting his army of cyber Brown Shirts to ensure that anyone who raises even the slightest voice of dissent will pay a heavy price for such insolence. And Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He's trying to make it extremely uncomfortable (and even dangerous) for ANYONE to speak up against him, it it is not hyperbole to call these Brown Shirt tactics.
This is the most disturbing aspect of this. We can all sit around and debate whether the Hamilton cast should have addressed Pence after the show, but what's made this a national story is Trump's response. Pence, after all, was either not bothered or is taking the high road. He's a politician and has been greeted with boos and hostility before, at baseball games in middle America, for example. Pence is certainly not my favorite politician, but he falls on the recognizable spectrum of American politics, which includes respect for free speech and dissent.
Trump doesn't really seem like an American politician at all. He ran as a would-be dictator. "Only I can fix it," he said at the Republican National Convention. He uses his Twitter feed to lash out at any sign of dissent. What happens when he is president? It seems like quite a coincidence that a Trump supporter started yelling and swearing at the Chicago performance of Hamilton on the night after Trump's tweets.
Hamilton, the musical, is fairly immune to Trump's wrath, because the show is sold out into 2018 and already has a large following. But what about more vulnerable works of art that aren't massive hits? What about other voices of dissent? Isn't this basically a warning shot? It seems like the statements of the future Most Powerful Man in the World should be taken rather seriously, rather than worry that Brandon Victor Dixon got a little too uppity for your taste and didn't know his place.