Tag: america
-
My blog has a name: Angles in America
Only twice, in the two years since I started this blog, have I been unable to write my monthly post: during the George Floyd protests, and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. History in real-time is tragic, and the internet has plenty of arenas for reacting. A diaristic think piece on a personal blog felt frivolous. Law enforcement…
-
Covid-19, hygiene theater, and the United States of Amnesia
Hygiene theater is not the—or even a—reason Covid-19 has hurt and killed so many Americans. The virus was novel and vicious, our government (like others) responded incompetently. Experts blundered, then battled their organizations’ mishaps. Yet even though hygiene theater may have had a negligible effect on disease prevention, it continuously wasted time and resources and, in the process, exposed the rotten pathology of American…
-
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: An All-American City
Growing up, I attended four public city schools. If I had to rank them by how vibrant they were, how much I enjoyed them, how much I got out of them, I would say middle school was the worst, kindergarten was kindergarten, and high school was pretty good—but my elementary school was special. The ranking…
-
The future of documentary: American Murder: The Family Next Door and the Watts family murders
Whatever you feel right now—joy, sorrow, pain, elation, cynicism, optimism—your spirits can be obliterated with a viewing of American Murder: The Family Next Door. This Netflix documentary tells the story of the Watts family murders, a crime so disturbing it gave the case investigators PTSD and prompted the presiding judge, who’d handle thousands of cases,…
-
American magical thinking: It’s all an illusion, but who cares? (Right now)
A few years ago, a former mid-level administrator at a prestigious private graduate school told me that one of their job responsibilities was to make the admissions process less corrupt. But they never got much traction. Wealth and influence, i.e., networking and future donations, were a candidate’s most valued qualifications. The dean—who came to higher…
Nathan Schiller 