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In May 2016, I surprised my daughter for her 18th birthday with a getaway to New York City to see her favorite play, Hamilton, in the Richard Rogers Theater with the original cast. We would fly out for a day and then fly back. It would cost way too much money, I’d get my wallet stolen, but I only had one daughter, and you only turned 18 once.

We were both obsessed with Hamilton. We knew every word of every song. It lived inside of us. It wasn’t just that it was brilliant, funny, moving, inventive and original. It also reminded all of us what this country’s founding principles were about. Best of all, it made learning history fun and cool. It was Schoolhouse Rock for a new generation.

When taking long road trips, we would blast the soundtrack, screaming every word. We’d start at the beginning and run through the entire play. Our inside jokes were witty asides from the play that we’d quote to each other so often that we had to force ourselves to stop because, after years of this, it was getting old.

By casting so many diverse people to play historical figures and making it a hip-hop musical, Hamilton was a bridge to the Black communities that were so often excluded from the Broadway experience and elite culture in general. Hamilton was for everybody, I thought. That was eight years ago.

As a devoted Obama supporter and, in 2016, a Hillary Clinton loyalist, I was overjoyed at the prospect of the first woman president to follow the first Black president. Heading into the election, I wrote this piece:

I wrote:

The election of Hillary Clinton is one of the most important battles in the war between two Americas. One America was built and maintained exclusively by and for white men. That demographic has awakened extremists on the left and right. The other America redeems the promise of possibility for everyone, no matter their status or skin color or class. That America has produced the nation’s first black president who not only lasted one term, but two, and who now promises to make history by helping elect another Democrat to follow his two terms. Electing Hillary Clinton doesn’t just say, “We’re electing a woman for the first time in our country’s history.” It also dares to say the first black American president was so successful he did the impossible by electing his chosen successor.

I didn’t notice back then that the Clinton campaign rented the entire Richard Rogers theater as a fundraiser. Tickets start at $2,700 a pop. I would never have thought twice about it. We were on the right side. It was an “all-of-society” effort to stop Trump. We were the good guys fighting the good fight, so why wouldn’t Hamilton be used that way?

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s entire career exists only because of Barack Obama. 15 years ago, in 2009, in Obama’s first year in office, Miranda performed this at the White House:

Over the years, Obama would co-opt the reputations and careers of major artists like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks, and, yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda. They would become ride-or-die for the president, which wasn’t something I would have noticed back then.

As Miranda’s play exploded and became instantly profitable and popular, we all took that to mean that everyone wanted to be included in our America. It was the better, cooler America. But that changed when Trump won. Now, all we could see was a hostile country that just rejected us.

Even when the cast called out Mike Pence during the performance to protest the Trump administration, I never thought about whether it was bipartisan or not. I knew it wasn’t and I agreed with it. I couldn’t see the line between art and propaganda.

But now I can. All it took was this statement by the producer of Hamilton, Jeffrey Seller, wherein the play cancels itself, hiding behind the usual