The Bethie Bee

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I was reading last week’s Economist when I came across a story entitled “The Mountain Man and the Surgeon”…the story compared the lives of a poor man in Appalachia and a “rich” man in the Congo (the two made roughly the same amount of money).

The story was quite interesting, and I enjoyed reading it…until I got to the last sentence. The author ended the story by writing, “then again, were Americans not so incurably discontented with their lot, their great country would not be half so dynamic as it is.”

Why, you may ask, would a person as in love with the American dream as I am be outraged by this sentence? Well, alone, the sentence is great, but put into the context of the story, it turns my stomach.

You see, in this story, the American who is incurably discontented with his lot is Enos Banks, a man from eastern Kentucky who’s discontent lies mainly in the fact that he can’t get as many hand-outs as he’d like.

Like many in Appalachia, Banks survives on public assistance. He has no job (he quit his job as a driver for a coal mining firm 25 years ago after a heart attack). Additionally, he “laments that the authorities deduct $67 a month because he won $3600 on the slot machines. Why, he asks, won’t they take into account of all the money he has lost gambling?”

Banks also complains that he cannot receive food stamps, since to qualify he would have to sell his truck, something he is not willing to do. We also learn that Banks and his wife divorced so that they can receive more government benefits (she continues to live next-door).

Banks even complains about the government workers who hand him his monthly check, “some are okay, but some act like the money’s coming out of their own pockets.” (Ehem…the money is coming out of their own pockets).

None of this is new, of course…the entitlement mentality is as rampant in the United States as the common cold. What is new is the way the author chose to equate Enos Banks to true American heroes who, “discontented with their lot,” fought revolutions, founded businesses, cured diseases, etc. Is Enos Banks really chasing the same dream?