Daren Ware believes in single-payer health care. He’s also a longtime union member, voted for Barack Obama for president, and lost his house in the last recession. But he’s still not listening to anything Democrats have to say about the party’s new economic agenda. 

“I did see something about their new message about creating jobs,” he said. “And I just laughed. Like, ‘Now you’re seeing that you guys are looking stupid, and the country is more against you than for you.’ So now they want to try and reverse that.”

Mr. Ware is a commercial painter in Warren, Mich., who voted for Donald Trump last year. He’s just the kind of voter that Democrats want to woo back with their “Better Deal” message, released last month in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections. It’s a play on the “New Deal” offered by iconic Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, and focuses squarely on the economy.

But some Democrats contend that it’s not just “the economy, stupid,” as Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist so famously quipped during Mr. Clinton’s successful bid in 1992.

There’s also a cultural disconnect between the largely urban and suburban party of the coasts and the disaffected voters in rural America and in white working-class areas such as Michigan’s Macomb County, where Ware lives. That county, just north of Detroit, flipped for Mr. Trump last year, and helped put Michigan in the Republican column.

Indeed, Ware, sitting inside his Ford F-150 pick-up truck at a strip-mall post office, says times are good right now. But he can’t stand the way Democrats tear down the president and he chafes against career politicians like Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

“Unfortunately, our brand is toxic,” says David “Mudcat” Saunders, a former Democratic strategist in Roanoke, Va., speaking specifically of rural parts of the country. Democrats are “branded with anti-rural culture” and are seen as wanting to take away guns, not caring about faith, and giving jobs to Mexico and China, he says. And then there’s the “patronizing,” elitist tone.

“Stone by stone, they’re building a wall [with voters] that would make the Trump wall look like a paper fence,” says Mr. Saunders. Yet he and other Democrats are pleased that they’re at least getting a message out. That they’re for something, and not just against Trump. It’s a first step on the long hike up to the summit of trust needed to win elections – a journey that won’t be completed in a day.

First up: 2018

The first big challenge is 2018, when Democrats need 24 seats to take back the House. The 23 seats held by Republicans in districts that went for Hillary Clinton are natural targets. But they probably won’t win them all, and need to gain some seats where Trump also prevailed. Right now, Democrats have identified 79 potential take-back seats held by Republicans, many in the heartland.

In the Senate, it’s a game of defense, with 10 Democrats trying to retain seats in states won by Trump, some of them crimson. Meanwhile, 38 governorships are up for grabs.

First and foremost, Democrats need to come back strong on economic trust, says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “That’s literally the most important thing we can do.”

Democrats have never won an election when they’ve been behind Republicans on the economy, she says. Just before last year’s balloting, Democrats were 17 points behind Republicans on economic trust and they remain behind, though the gap has narrowed considerably, she says.

Hoping to address that, the Democrats’ “Better Deal” emphasizes higher wages, lower costs, and preparation for 21^st  century jobs. It advocates a $15 minimum wage, less expensive living through lower drug prices and paid family and sick leave, and tax credits for employers that start retraining and apprenticeship programs. Last week they unveiled another plank in their program: new trade policies.

Out of touch with blue-collar lives?

Ms. Lake would have preferred that the agenda be coupled with political reform, such as campaign finance, which was a big part of the Bernie Sanders message. And while she acknowledges that Democrats have sounded condescending, “the economic message is the best way to bridge the cultural divide,” she maintains.

“We seemed out of touch with blue-collar lives and we didn’t seem to get that this economy was really hard for a lot of working people,” she says.

The “Better Deal” has gotten mixed reviews – some see it as warmed-over policies, others cite the name as too close to a Papa John’s pizza slogan, and abortion-rights groups are angry that it makes no mention of their cause. Indeed, the plan specifically leaves out controversial social issues to give freer rein to candidates in more culturally conservative areas.

Democrats are not suddenly going to become a pro-life, pro-gun, or anti-same-sex-marriage party to meet the cultural concerns of voters, says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which handicaps elections at the University of Virginia.

“Being liberal on the big social issues, that’s just part of the Democratic identity now. But the party should be open to individual candidates who don’t hold all those opinions, because I honestly believe that to win the House, Democrats are going to have to win several Trump districts,” says Mr. Kondik.

Republicans have their own issues. “They have a lot of problems with nonwhite voters who feel like Republicans are hostile to them,” says Kondik. Trump has not helped them with that, he adds. “There are perceived blind spots in both parties.”

One way Democrats are trying is by putting up candidates who fit a more conservative-seeming mold, such as former Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath, who is running in Kentucky’s 6^th district. Her video campaign announcement, which features the bomber jacket-clad veteran – the first woman to pilot an F-18 in combat – walking down a tarmac telling her story, went viral.

Fielding Democratic veterans “says something to the point that we need to connect culturally,” says Emily Parcell, a consultant who worked on the Iowa presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton. “It helps to show that not every Democrat is the liberal boogeyman that [Republicans] would have you believe.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A controversial memo from a now-fired employee at Google headquarters claimed that the lack of diversity at the Mountain View, Calif., company was at least partly based on biological differences between women and men.

When an internal memo from a Google engineer spread over the weekend arguing, among other things, that women are less suited to certain types of jobs due to biological reasons the prevalent early reaction online was one of disgust.

But not everyone was jeering.

James Damore’s 10-page “manifesto,” addressing a wide range of perceived problems with Google and Silicon Valley’s approach to fixing their well-known diversity issues, attracted support from some quarters, including from a segment of Google employees.

“The fella who posted that is extremely brave,” one anonymous worker commented on Google's internal thread, as reported by Motherboard. “We need more people standing up against the insanity. Otherwise ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ which is essentially a pipeline from Women’s and African Studies into Google, will ruin the company.”

That small but unified pocket of support for Mr. Damore highlights how much easier it is in the internet age for people to find validation for their ideas, and to amplify and legitimize even damaging, fringe viewpoints. On its face, the idea that women can’t do certain jobs because they are women is categorically unacceptable; this week, it’s an argument.

“What’s real, factual, empirical is apparently up for debate,” says Kara Van Cleaf, a sociologist and visiting lecturer at Monmouth University who studies gender, labor, and technology. “People feel freer to voice such ideas. It [seemed] like the narrative that men are biologically different (i.e. ‘better) than women had abated a bit in recent years, but it was right under the surface.”

The phenomenon is a blow to techno-optimists who hoped that internet-fostered communication would lead to greater understanding and a sense of interconnection, even among people who disagreed. It also points to the slow progress that Silicon Valley is making in terms of diversity.

The clear majority of online responders labeled Damore’s memo as sexist and wrong. He accused the company of an ideological sameness that stifled free speech and the possibility for real change. But he also based much of his argument on the idea that women are underrepresented at the company not because of discrimination, but because, among other things, they’re more empathizers than systematizers and have higher levels of neuroticism and anxiety that make them naturally ill-suited for certain jobs.

“I experienced this [attitude] at Google, and was frustrated that they did nothing about rhetoric that was harming employees,” Kelly Ellis, a software engineer, wrote on Twitter about the ideas in the memo. 

“To be clear, it went viral because 99% of people wanted to comment about how unsupported/wrong/hurtful the doc was,” another Twitter user wrote. 

Google fired Damore for violating the company’s code of conduct. “Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a statement. “But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.”

Damore is suing Google. And his supporters are angry.

“So diversity and inclusion actually means that having a divergent opinion results in exclusion? That’s the very definition of hypocrisy,” one wrote.

The passionate response to the memo on both sides underscores just how fraught Silicon Valley’s efforts to address its inequalities are – inequalities that exist elsewhere in the working world, but not in nearly such a public way. The tech industry has been at the forefront of offering benefits like long parental leaves, and the biggest companies, including Google and Facebook, have made their percentages of women and minorities public since 2014.

But progress has been slow. According to Google’s latest public report, released in June, just 20 percent of the company’s tech workers are women, and 25 percent of those in leadership positions. Damore’s memo, and its support, are yet another public setback in the industry’s quest for improving its reputation for inclusivity. 

“I used to work in the tech industry, so I wasn’t at all surprised at the memo, or that it proved to be popular with people who work at Google and beyond,” says Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at Hunter College who studies racism and technology. “There was an informal survey of Google employees going around that showed around a third supported the ideas. That seems about right to me, if a little low.”  

Ms. Daniels researches the way that long-discredited, discriminatory ideas are reinvigorated and spread online. “The internet lets anyone connect around their identity,” she says.

 ”The people who have a hard-core belief in white nationalism saw the potential of the internet early on,” Daniels says. “They’ve used it to spread their ideology, gain support for their ideas, to change the narrative, and to connect with one another.”

She says portions of Damore’s memo, though focused on gender, “could have come from one of the white nationalist sites I study.” A common tactic, she notes, is taking topics that were considered closed, like slavery being a bad thing, and opening them up again for the sake of debate. “The legitimizing and amplifying of racism and misogyny are baked into the technology,” she says.

But that doesn’t mean that the tribalism enabled by the internet is entirely a bad thing, Ms. Van Cleaf notes.

If it’s easier for racists and misogynists to find each other online, it’s also easier for people who have experienced racism and misogyny to seek each other out and find validation. She points to the popularizing of the term “mansplaining,” which refers to men lecturing women in a patronizing way. “What a revelation to have a label for that experience!” she says. “Women everywhere encounter and deal with mansplainers. The internet helps us see racism and misogyny in action – and that is good if we can call it out.” 

Swiss prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has taken on the Italian and Russian mafias, served as the chief prosecutor in two international tribunals, and spent the last five years fiercely advocating for justice in Syria, scene of some of the worst crimes against humanity the world has witnessed in real time.

But frustration at the paralysis of the United Nations Security Council and the absence of a forum in which to mete out justice, the veteran decided to throw in the towel and resign from a UN panel investigating war crimes in Syria.

Ms. Del Ponte announced her resignation with trademark aplomb Sunday on the sidelines of the Locarno Film Festival.

Pulling no punches, she spoke of her futile attempts over the past five years to persuade the Security Council to either establish an ad hoc tribunal or to refer the case of Syria to the International Criminal Council (ICC) in The Hague.

“There is total impunity,” Del Ponte said, faulting Russia and China for vetoing resolutions seeking to refer Syria to the ICC. Moscow, in particular, has been an unwavering and hands-on ally of the government in Damascus, providing it with military support and diplomatic cover.

Del Ponte, who served as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, says the ferocity of the violence in Syria is unlike anything she has seen before. But she concluded the commission has “no future” due to the lack of “political will” to see justice in Syria.

If her resignation is seen as a setback for the search for justice in Syria, other international advocates of human rights, while acknowledging her frustration and crediting her service, are not as discouraged that in the long run justice will prevail.

The UN commission's mandate

The UN panel, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, was established in August 2011, just five months after the start of protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The protesters were met with a violent response from the Arab nation’s feared security forces. Parts of the opposition took up arms, and jihadists rushed in.

The UN commission has a mandate to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law by all parties in the conflict, with a view toward holding perpetrators accountable. Del Ponte, who is credited with proving beyond reasonable doubt that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, in Bosnia, came on board in September 2012.

Initially, the panel focused on the crimes committed by backers of Mr. Assad. Notably, the commission documented the systematic, wide-scale use of torture and the enforced disappearance and death in custody of thousands of detainees held in state-run formal and informal detention centers. The commission has also tackled the crimes of armed and terrorist groups in Syria.

“A democratic opposition no longer exists inside the Syrian conflict,” Del Ponte said in Italian remarks broadcast Tuesday by Euronews.

Her resignation comes at a time when the prospects for justice in Syria appear bleak. Diplomatically, the emphasis is on finding a political solution. Militarily, pro-Assad forces are at a clear advantage, and support for those aiming to overthrow his government greatly diminished. Geographically, the country is increasingly divided.

The possible implication of Russia’s own forces in war crimes makes it even less likely for Moscow to sign off on an ICC referral or the creation of an ad hoc international tribunal for Syria. Del Ponte says she has told Russian officials they could be judged as “accomplices” to war crimes in Syria.

Justice for the powerful

Stephen Rapp, the former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, says many in the international human rights community share her frustration but not all are equally discouraged. Speaking from Arusha, Tanzania, he points to the conviction earlier this year of Hissene Habre, the former Chad president, on war crimes charges.

The African leader was sentenced – more than a quarter of a century after the crimes were committed – thanks to evidence amassed by a national investigative commission. “Justice, when it comes to atrocities, when it comes to powerful individuals, doesn’t often get delivered until the conflict is over,” notes Mr. Rapp.

A similar body of evidence is being amassed in the context of Syria with the help of Syrian activists and lawyers. The commission has produced more than 20 reports and several thematic papers on the basis of thousands of interviews. It has also compiled a list of possible war criminals that is kept at offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the commission, says via email that he and his fellow commissioner, Karen Koning AbuZayd, would continue to work “for the right to truth of the victims and accountability for perpetrators of the violations and crimes committed in the war in Syria.”

Mr. Pinheiro stresses that the commission has never taken sides in the conflict and has the unique advantage of having access to all parties involved in it, with the exception of the Islamic State militant group and Al Qaeda. One of the main obstacles to the panel’s work has been lack of access to Syria.

“We are the only commission of inquiry working on an ongoing conflict,” he says.

The body of work of the Syrian commissions to date, says Rapp, helps lay out the contextual patterns of the crimes and can be very relevant to criminal prosecutions, starting with ongoing efforts in European domestic courts and eventually an international or specialized tribunal.

The smallest victims

Del Ponte has used remarks on her resignation to highlight the plight of the smallest victims of the conflict in Syria, noting children are maimed and killed as a result of the fighting or die fleeing the violence. In Locarno, she recalled the stare of a two-year-old Syrian boy who survived a bombing attack and was brought for treatment in Amman, Jordan.

The Syrian doctor tending to the child in an overcrowded clinic room was proud of saving his life, but at a loss as to where to put him since his entire family was killed in the bombing attack. Del Ponte endeavored to find a home for this boy in her native Ticino, and did so months later, but she was unable to find the child back in Amman.

“It really upset me because I still remember that gaze now,” she shared.

In a bid to overcome the deadlock in the Security Council, the UN General Assembly in December voted in favor of establishing an independent, international mechanism to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria.

Rapp, the former ambassador- at-large, sees the 105 nations who voted in favor of the mechanism, compared with 15 against, as a clear sign of the international community’s “political will” to see justice for the crimes committed in Syria.

The new mechanism has a mandate to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of violations, which can then be shared with a court.

“We need to continue,” he stressed. “The atrocities have not ended.”

Reem Saad/AP

Women protest in front Jordan's Parliament in Amman Aug. 1, 2017 with banners calling on legislators to repeal a provision that allowed a rapist to escape punishment if he married his victim. Parliament voted to repeal the provision that day. The banner in the middle reads: Article 308 is a disgrace to the Jordanian justice system. The banner on the left reads: Article 308 does not protect honor, it protects the culprit.

The changes were as radical as they were swift. On July 26, Tunisia voted to criminalize sexual harassment and discrimination against women. On Aug. 1, Jordan’s Parliament voted to scrap a law that allowed rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims.

Lebanon and Iraq now look to follow suit later this year and end their marry-your-rapist laws and criminalize violence against women.

As sudden as these victories for women’s rights may seem, they are not an unanticipated wave of change. Rather, they are the result of a quiet women’s revolution taking part in the Arab world that has been decades in the making and has drawn on women’s increased participation in politics and a revolution in cross-border communication, especially in social media.

Now, as other Arab countries look to repeal similar repressive laws, lawmakers and community leaders are setting their sights on building on those gains, including equal pay in the workplace.

In Jordan, activists have been working to repeal Article 308 – the marry-the-rapist clause – for two decades; but the most recent attempt in 2013 only gathered two dozen signatures in Parliament. In Tunisia, for years after the 2011 revolution that triggered the Arab spring, women’s rights activists saw the proposed law stall time and again.

Women MPs

Yet both Jordan and Tunisia have experienced an important development: an increased number of women elected to parliamentary bodies.

Jordan’s 2016 elections saw women grab 20 of Parliament’s 130 seats, the highest proportion of women ever, in an election that fielded a record 252 female candidates. In Tunisia’s parliamentary elections in 2014, women were elected to 31 percent of the parliament’s seats – the highest percentage of any Arab country and more than in France.

Activists and experts say many of these women members of Parliament (MPs) used their positions to lobby their governments, cajole colleagues, and introduce debates over issues that lawmakers previously had been unwilling to address.

“Women and the civil society expect us to take the first steps, to drive these issues forward, and encourage progress in human rights and women’s rights,” says Wafa Bani Mustafa, a Jordanian MP who led the campaigns to scrap article 308 in 2013 and 2017.

“Not all women MPs are on board,” she says, “but those of us that were willing, answered this call.”

In Iraq, 25 percent of parliamentarians are women, while in Lebanon a mere 3 percent are.

Contributions from NGOs

Aiding the cause was the establishment of dozens of local, national, and nongovernmental organizations advocating for Arab women throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. These groups gave a channel and lobbying arm for those who supported advancing Arab women’s rights, giving them a “voice at the table” by allowing them to interact with and pressure MPs, the government, and local communities.

In Jordan, the Jordanian Women’s Union, Mizan Law Group for Human Rights, and the Jordanian chapter of Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI) – all worked to change perceptions in towns and villages by providing statistics on gender-based violence and the personal cases of women wronged by the law or forced to marry their rapist.

In Tunisia, the revolution allowed for an explosion of women’s rights groups, such as the League of Tunisian Women Voters and Aswat Nissan, taking up specific causes, including encouraging women candidates and strategic voting. Some 700 civil society organizations work on gender issues in Tunisia.

These new groups pushed for changes in laws and discriminatory practices that left women vulnerable to violence or at the mercy of their husbands.

“In the mid-90s and early 2000s, we started raising topics you never heard about in public and in the press, such as topics of rape, honor crimes, violence against women, abortion,” says Rana Husseini, a veteran journalist and women’s activist who spearheaded campaigns to end so-called honor killings in Jordan. 

Arab women activists faced an uphill battle. Opponents – ranging from tribal leaders to nationalists and Islamists – accused women activists of supporting a “Western agenda,” and accused women’s rights groups of attempting to undermine centuries of culture and traditions.

“Our traditions and culture call for respect for women, and our religions do not call for killing, for people to appoint themselves as judge and executioner. We fought for two decades to make that case to the public,” Ms. Husseini said.

Sharing lessons learned

Over the past decade, another important development strengthened the women’s movement: cross-border solidarity.

Regional groups such as the Coalition of Arab Women MPs Combatting Violence Against Women, Karama, and the Arab Women Parliamentarians Forum increased cooperation between Arab women activists and MPs battling to amend or cancel draconian laws in their home countries. For the first time, Arab women activists coordinated their strategies and learned from each other’s successes and failures.

“A woman from Jordan learns from Morocco, a woman from Iraq learns from Tunisia, and it goes on – the ability for Arab women to exchange ideas and strategies has been important,” says Hibaaq Osman, the director of Karama and two other regional Arab women’s rights groups.

Women’s advancements in Arab countries, the vast majority having inherited similar laws imported by Western colonial powers and upheld by conservative social forces, have had a “domino effect,” emboldening each other, activists say.

“We started saying, ‘Why can’t we end article 308 in Jordan, when Egypt has done it in 1999, Morocco in 2014, Tunisia in 2017, and there are motions happening in Lebanon and Iraq?” says Hala Ahed, a legal consultant at the Jordan Women’s Union.

“Women’s rights activists can now say; it has been done elsewhere in the Arab world, why not here?”

Women’s Spring

The groundwork laid in the 1990s and early 2000s left women rights activists poised to take advantage of two important revolutions at the beginning of this decade: the Arab Spring and social media.

Despite proving unable to throw off the yoke of authoritarianism across the Arab world, the popular uprisings in 2011 – in part organized and driven by women – showed Arab women that they could mobilize and reach out to supporters and the public even with the most limited resources.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, select tribal leaders, conservative Islamists, and clerics spoke in the name of citizens, Muslims, and men in general. Arab regimes and monarchies deferred to these groups, which they often relied on for support, as the voice of the people.

Now, social media has broken their monopoly, exposing bastions of support for women’s rights in often the most unexpected places.

Bedouin tribesmen, men in rural villages, devout women, and imams have all come out in support of ending discriminatory laws and advancing women’s rights during the Jordanian and Tunisian campaigns and even in conservative Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia.

The ability of average citizens to have their say has completely changed the debate – and put greater pressure on those arguing to maintain such laws out of respect for “culture and tradition.”

“Social media has given a voice to citizens who were previously blocked out of the debate – and it turns out that the majority are for an end to these discriminatory laws,” says Ms. Ahed, the legal consultant.

“Seeing citizens of all walks of life voice their support, decision-makers are no longer shying away from women’s rights.”

“Women’s rights are human rights, which affect every family,” says Mohammed Suleiman, a 22-year resident of Irbid, in northern Jordan.  

“If we allow rapists to take away the rights of one woman, they take away the rights of all of us.”

“Women’s rights are part of our Arab and Islamic culture, not something imported,” says Reem Ali, an Amman housewife, who was for scrapping the measure.  

“We are asking to have our rights restored, not for a revolutionary change.”

Gulf progress lacking

But the wave of women’s activism rocking much of the Arab world is barely making ripples in Gulf Arab states, where patriarchal societies, a lack of political freedoms, and a strict interpretation of Islam are preventing any action from taking hold.

In Saudi Arabia, women are still subjected to the guardianship system, under which women are required to have the permission of a male relative or husband to travel, change residence, access health care, marry, or even be given employment.

In a lone bright spot in Saudi Arabia, Maryam Otaibi, an activist leading calls for the end to the guardianship system, was released from prisons in July after being held for fleeing her family home without her father’s permission. Her release without a male guardian was hailed by activists as a step toward moving away from the system.

In the UAE, a version of the guardianship system exists, there are no formal laws against violence against women, and women who are sexually assaulted face difficulty in reporting charges, Human Rights Watch reports.

But even in conflict-hit Arab states, the seeds of women activism – and future change – are being planted.

In Syria, where prior to the revolution there was not a single women’s civil society group, there are now hundreds of organizations working across the country on gender-related issues.

In Libya, following the overthrow of strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, women formed the Libyan Women’s Platform for Peace and pushed for an election law that allowed fair representation of women in parliament. To this day, under the threat of assassination and kidnapping, women are working for an end to conflict and a return to the rule of law.

In Jordan, activists have their sights set on legal loopholes that allow for reduced charges in honor crimes and on women’s inability to pass on citizenship to children born to a foreign father. Women’s unemployment in Jordan and Tunisia, which stand at 33 percent and 27 percent, respectively, are another cause.

In Tunisia and Jordan, women activists say they will continue monitoring, campaigning, and pressuring authorities to make sure their hard-fought gains are applied in the courts and on the ground.

“Arab women no longer are going to come to the table where they are expected to act as the table cloth,” says Karama’s Ms. Osman. “They are going to come because they are a force to reckon with.”

Joan Marcus/The Public Theater/AP

Actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (c.) with the cast during a performance of "Hamilton," in New York. The popular musical has won 11 Tony awards, is projected to earn $1 billion – and inspired a growing number of tweens with its music and history.

On a summer day in New Jersey in 1804, two of America’s Founding Fathers participated in a duel that killed one and effectively ended the career of the other. 

What had slightly lower stakes and a less tragic outcome was the water cannon duels that took place recently at a child’s birthday party in Pittsburgh. Party goers turned their backs on one another, paced, then shot and fired just like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who the guest of honor, Juliet Forrest, had come to know and love through the hit musical “Hamilton.”

Projected to become a billion-dollar Broadway hit and having picked up 11 Tony Awards, "Hamilton" was guaranteed a place in the pantheon of musical theater. But the "$10 dollar Founding Father" has picked up an unexpected fan base beyond the matinee crowd: tweens, who are experts on the show’s often tongue-twisting lyrics and, incidentally, much of early American history.

Zest for the show among the eight- to 12-year old crowd is showing up not just in backyards, but also in classrooms around the country, where students are becoming “Hamilton” experts, often helping adults navigate the musical's familiar choruses. 

While a Treasury secretary is perhaps a surprising icon for a group normally drawn to Disney princesses, what captivates them, explains Dr. Marilyn Plotkins, chairwoman of the theatre department at Suffolk University in Boston, is an intriguing narrative. "There's a really good story,” she says. “There's a lot of action. [And] I think the women in 'Hamilton' are so appealing. You know, they're strong, they're beautiful, they're articulate, they're fighters.”  

It all starts with the soundtrack

Christine Forrest, mother of birthday girl Juliet and a 10th grade history teacher, is a fan of the soundtrack and put on the show’s song “Helpless” one day in the car while driving with her daughter. “That was all she asked to listen to all the time, was that song,” Ms. Forrest says. Then Juliet branched out to the rest of the soundtrack, eventually becoming an ardent fan.

It wasn't a big leap from there to considering that the Founding Father be a part of her eighth birthday, as others her age have. Juliet, who loves the character of Hamilton’s wife, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, suggested that instead of gifts, party guests bring “Hamilbills” – the $10 bills on which Hamilton appears – to donate to Graham Windham, a nonprofit organization that helps children and was co-founded by Ms. Hamilton. The party, held last September, raised more than $350. 

Across the country around the same time, young people older than Juliet were being converted to the show through a curriculum at Corona del Mar’s Harbor Day School in California, where Chatom Arkin incorporated the history-rich musical into his classroom. The musical has made its way into schools and sparked an abundance of teacher's guides from sources such as  School Library Journal and the Gilder Lehrman Institute Institute of American History in New York.

At the private Harbor Day School, Mr. Arkin’s eighth-graders took part in an integrated curriculum about “Hamilton,” where, last fall, they learned about the musical in his literature class, tackled the real-life aspects in history class, and studied Hamilton’s financial wizardry in math class.

'The Hamilton Mixtape' effect

Mr. Miranda’s rap bona fides helped win some initially skeptical students over to the show, according to Arkin. “We have a kid who's all about rap and says that anything written by anyone but Nas is garbage,” Arkin says. “All I had to do was actually play him stuff from ‘The Hamilton Mixtape’ where Nas is rapping with Lin-Manuel Miranda and he was like, ‘All right, all right.’ ”

Student Jacqueline McNeill is a fan of the show and helped Arkin with the curriculum. She remembers her classmates having expected the soundtrack to be “more like showtunes” but then being won over by the rap and hip-hop aspects, to the point that some students began exploring other musicals afterward. “As soon as people heard ‘Hamilton’ who maybe weren't into musicals before, they [said]…, 'I like this so much, I want to start listening to more,’” she says.

Out of Arkin’s more than 40 students, he says almost all of them were big fans by the end of the unit – perhaps a little too much. After it was over, “I actually at one point [said], 'OK, next kid who starts singing ‘Hamilton’ is going to spend lunch detention with me,’ ” Arkin remembers. “‘We have got to move on.’... I would like to teach it again and I hope I do.”

'Hamilton' – whose soundtrack comes in clean and explicit versions, due to some swearing – is also prompting more discussions in families. Questions about the United States political system and the direction that the country should take come up frequently during the show. Forrest says the musical is an integral part of their talks at home about current events.

“In the current climate, where there are discussions about immigration, about what America means, and what the Constitution is, obviously it's something we refer back to all the time,” she says. “Like 'Hamilton would have thought this' and 'Washington would have thought this'.... It's kind of become part of our daily lives in a lot of ways."

Don Wadsworth, option coordinator for acting and musical theater at Carnegie Mellon University, understands about discussing the musical. He wrangled tickets to the perpetually sold-out show to take his granddaughters, ages 10 and 12, who he says are still “loving it, absolutely, knowing every word.”

“When we went to New York, it wasn't like they wanted to see a lot of other [shows],” he says. “They just wanted to see that one.” Because Mr. Wadsworth knew people involved with the show, his group was able to go backstage. “I think it's the pinnacle of their lives at this point,” he says. “We're going to be hard-pressed to equal that with anything else.”

Wadsworth, who is also a professor of voice and speech at Carnegie Mellon, says he even looked to one of his granddaughters for help when he wanted to use one of the raps from the show in his classroom. “I don't mind going down to the 12-year-old and saying, I need you to teach your professor grandfather a little bit,” he says.

Guests at the "Hamilton" themed parties are also getting an education. “I would say 75 percent of the people who came to the party really had no idea and were just kind of enjoying the party as it was,” Forrest says. “And we had some people who already knew what was up and were really excited about it. But I think a lot of people ended up being really curious and asking a lot of questions ... 'Why are you into this? What do you like about this?”

In addition to the water cannon duels (which Juliet says was her favorite part), guests at the party at Pittsburgh’s North Park also had the opportunity to “pin the cannonball on King George,” Forrest says. Her husband, Tom, made a poster of cast member Jonathan Groff in costume as the British monarch. A treasure chest piñata became the “Treasury chest,” referencing Hamilton’s work as the first secretary of the Treasury. Juliet wore an “Eliza dress,” a blue Colonial-style dress; while another guest showed up as King George, complete with crown; and a boy attended in colonial garb that a child would have worn during the Revolutionary era. All the guests received tricorn hats to wear.

“It was perfect,” Forrest says.

AP Photo

Tens of thousands of North Koreans carrying propaganda slogans gathered for an Aug. 9 rally at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang as a show of support for their rejection of the United Nations' latest round of sanctions.

As North Korea’s capability for nuclear war has grown, so too has its war of words with the United States. The rhetorical warfare peaked this week with President Trump promising “fire and fury” if North Korea makes more threats. The North then said it was weighing a strike on Guam, a US territory in the western Pacific Ocean.

Amid the nuclear brinkmanship and the tit-for-tat diktats, it is important to remember where North Korea is at its weakest and most vulnerable. Its missiles may be traveling farther and its estimated 60 atomic bombs may be missile-ready, as US intelligence claims. Yet its military strength cannot cover up the fact that the regime of Kim Jong-un is living a lie, one that it will not admit and that could be its undoing.

For nearly seven decades, North Korea has claimed to its people that it is self-sufficient in its economy and self-reliant in defense. This ideology of “juche” was false from the start. When Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of the current leader and the nation’s founder, wanted to invade South Korea in 1950, he hardly did it on his own. He asked permission from the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. And then he relied on military assistance from China’s Mao Zedong.

The point was made again in the mid-1990s when a great famine struck North Korea – a result of its false notion of self-sufficiency in agriculture. It was forced to accept emergency food aid.

The reliance on others continues to this day. Some 60,000 to 80,000 North Koreans have been sent abroad to earn hard currency. And despite the latest economic sanctions ordered Aug. 5 by the United Nations Security Council, the country still relies on China for oil and as an export market for North Korea's fishing fleet. The new sanctions will only cut its $3 billion annual export revenue by a third.

A government can survive for only so long in a contradiction between its ideals and its actions. And the truth about North Korea is that it has long needed trade, aid, and technology from other countries. Just as individuals who self-isolate come to realize their bond with humanity, North Korea must eventually admit the truth of its reliance on the international community – and along with it, the norms of peace and the necessity of constraints on nuclear weapons.

The Soviet Union came out of its myth of closed markets in 1985 under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). It then joined the global economic system (which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse). In 1986, Vietnam’s Communist Party followed Moscow with its doi moi (rejuvenation) and embrace of markets (and later, good relations with the US).

The biggest lesson for North Korea, however, may lie in its closest ally, China.

Like the Kim family, Mao believed in self-sufficiency for China from 1950 until his death in 1976. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, realized how Mao’s ideology had left China behind other countries and was the cause of mass starvation. In addition, tens of thousands of Chinese were fleeing to Hong Kong.

Deng’s trip to France in 1975 transformed his thinking. “The more we see, the more we realize how backward we are,” he said. By 1979, China’s Communist Party opened itself to reform and cooperating with other countries – although not enough to jeopardize the party’s power. By 1992, China even opened relations with South Korea for the sake of business.

Mao’s promise of self-sufficiency is now largely broken. And despite recent threats to its neighbors’ territories, China mostly operates within international norms. This transition, as well as China’s continuing aid to North Korea, is why Beijing is the focus of the US and others in tightening sanctions on North Korea.

The ultimate goal is to awaken the Kim regime to the same realization of many other countries: that a country cannot live a lie. North Korea must admit it is no island. It already relies on others and can rely even more on them if it only contains or eliminates its nuclear weapons.