THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

Being a major Hamilton fan has its advantages. Hearing the music again in all its creative brilliance and high energy inspires me to do great things and to tackle tough problems--and not throw away my shot, of course. But it also has its downside--my mind becomes so over-stimulated that it sings Hamilton lyrics at three a.m. Rise up, rise up! I'm sure Lin-Manuel's intention wasn't that kind of rising up.

The song The World Turned Upside Down recounts the Battle of Yorktown, the most important battle of the Revolutionary War, the one that ended the fighting in the American colonies and ultimately led to The Treaty of Paris, which recognized the United States as a free and independent nation.Why was the world turned upside down? Simple, the colonies were the underdog, as Lin-Manuel elegantly explains it, they were outgunned outmanned outnumbered and outplanned, but they won anyway. They changed the world as they knew it.

Is it a coincidence that a generation of middle school, high school, and college kids, brought up on Hamilton, are turning our world upside down, staging their own revolution and threatening to overthrow the government that ignores them? It is not. And by overthrow, I mean vote the bastards out, exactly as our Founding Fathers intended. These wise forefathers tried to imagine every possible scenario and although they couldn't have foreseen the NRA's hold on our elected officials, nor the firepower of weapons of war in the hands of civilians, they understood power and corruption. They had faith that their system of checks and balances could withstand the onslaught and that good people would rise up. I think we can agree that our system of governing has never been tested like this before, but if our future rests in the hands of these brave children, the Founding Fathers were wise men indeed.