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You are here: Home / Politics / Something Has Gone Wrong

Something Has Gone Wrong

January 27th, 2014 by Sallie Bingham in Politics 2 Comments

Something Has Gone WrongSomething has gone wrong with this country, and I don’t know how or exactly when.

Part of it is the necessary disillusionment following various forms of hype; for example, that the internet was going to be a great liberating force.

I never really believed that, but it seemed a lot of people did. I was distracted by the discomfort I feel when I see so many of us intently focusing on their iPhones in every imaginable situation: cafes, family gatherings, readings. About the only place now where the phones don’t come out is in church—at least not yet. And then the mad scramble to buy the latest version.

But my discomfort with this new social habit really has little to do with the devastating effect of this technology.

Something has gone wrong with this coun­try, and I don’t know how or exactly when.

It can’t possibly be liberating when Google at 97% and Microsoft at 90% control the market.

This is as rich an opportunity for people control, and vast profits, as the great oil, steel and tobacco trusts that destroyed competition and built addictions early in the last century, before President Taft enforced President Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting legislation.

There is no trust-busting of the monopolies that control our information services, which are not information services at all but tools of indoctrination.

Likewise Wikipedia. In my hurry to find answers for research questions pertaining to my next book, a biography of Doris Duke, I’ve fallen into the habit of consulting Wikipedia without giving much thought to the source of all these tidbits of information—without wondering about their accuracy, or the point of view they must represent.

In the same name of haste and convenience, I occasionally order books from Amazon—who can resist that one-click buying?—although my local bookstore is being driven out of business by my, and our, obsession with ease and convenience.

And, when I last taught, I didn’t know that 41% of the faculty at the college, like 41% of the faculty at all colleges and universities, is now termed adjunct, as I was, laboring for almost no money and no benefits while shouldering the teaching burdens of tenured faculty—themselves an endangered species.

I was much impressed by a speech recorded on the invaluable Alternative Radio, really the only source of news with relevance and integrity, given by Robert McChesney. His speech is titled, “The Internet, Capitalism and Democracy” and it is the source of some of my facts. What struck me forcibly, though, was that McChesney dares to question whether capitalism itself is the cause of our problems.

In positing some form of socialism as a better alternative, he admits that the very thought is “Marxist” and therefore cannot be mentioned, as though we are still stuck in the cloud of distrust and mental confinement generated by the Nixon witch hunts.

And perhaps we are.

Our obsession with romance—notable in a feeble movie called “The Invisible Woman,” where Charles Dickens’ mistress’ assertion that she doesn’t know the freedom men know seems almost shocking—blinds us to systemic problems.

If we can just find the right romantic partners, nothing else will matter, not the wretched minimum wage, the highway robbery of chains like Wal-Marts which underpay their workers so that they will only survive through government programs, the poverty of a state like my New Mexico, not only the driest but now the poorest in the union, with the highest percentage of children living in poverty—and this is the same state that supports a “world class” opera with all the trimmings of taste and privilege—I could go on and on.

But perhaps the presence of teachers, whom I spoke to Sunday as part of the Tecolote program offered by St. Johns College here in Santa Fe, is in fact our only hope, our only example of what sheer persistence and hard work mean. Poorly paid, hobbled by the ridiculous restrictions of No Child Left Behind, dealing with many of the children and young people we of privilege seem to want to know nothing about, these men and women may be our only heroes.

Laboring in a culture that has lost whatever integrity it once had—but laboring.

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In Politics Charles Dickens Tecolote program New Mexico Doris Duke St. Johns College Robert McChesney The Invisible Woman

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Nathaniel Hesse on Facebook says

    January 27th, 2014 at 9:20 am

    interesting and a stark reminder that the future is here and we are not really understanding it at all.

    Reply
  2. Barbara Hunter-Harmon on Facebook says

    January 27th, 2014 at 1:04 pm

    Seriously big income inequality and going back to a two-class society; it’s been brewing for a few decades.

    Reply

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Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

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Rebecca Reynolds & Salie Bingham at SOMOS

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