This morning, I rode my bike downtown to the bank. (exercise – healthy!) After depositing my check, I decided to stop for breakfast at the Main Street Cafe. For any readers unfamiliar with Kalamazoo, Main Street is a wonderful little breakfast and lunch joint. I don’t know if the waitress knows my name, but she calls me “honey” and always remembers what I order.

I am a creature of habits: gyro and feta omelet with a pot of coffee and a large orange juice. (cholesterol, hypertension – unhealthy! bad!) Afterward, I smoke a cigarette and read a book for a while. (lung cancer – unhealthy! bad!)

Following breakfast, I ride my bike back to my apartment (good!), which smells vaguely of stale beer. I threw a bit of a party last night. (liver disease – bad!)

As a very general rule, college students (myself included) are not the healthiest of individuals. We drink and smoke and stay up all night stressing about term papers. Fortunately for us, most of us remain dependents of our parents, and retain our insurance benefits, so long as we are enrolled as full-time students. If I keel over from lung cancer or liver disease or get hit by a truck while riding my bike (irony – good!), I will be provided with excellent, state-of-the-art healthcare.

I am sure by now everyone can tell where this article is going, eh?

Most people are not college students. Many of these people have absolutely no health coverage whatsoever.

To me, the much-publicized Healthcare Brawl 2009 seems like a bit of a no-brainer. People can’t afford cancer treatment, you

Also, Soylent Green is Grandma

say? Golly, we should probably get on that!

Of course, this is not the case.

This excellent article by Nicholas D. Kristof led me to a rather disturbing statistic. According to the National Academy of Sciences, more people die every year thanks to lack of health insurance than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have shit on the inefficiencies of the American healthcare system.

We threw hundreds of billions of dollars worth of missiles and fighter jets and bullets at Al-Qaeda for their actions. I wonder what we’re doing about the 18,000 annual deaths a year caused by our own inefficiency.

The media is completely fixated on the hysterics of the right wing fringe which, it seems, is too busy worrying that Obama wants to grind up Grandma and turn her into cat food. They have yet to contribute anything constructive to the debate. Those that aren’t obsessing over “death panels” are busy arming themselves to the teeth. If there’s one thing the far right does well, it’s death fetishism.

This is not to say that the Democrats are blameless. Despite overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress, they have so far proved unwilling (I hope not unable) to pass a bill over the heads of a rowdy, but largely hapless Republican minority.

In the meantime, 50 more people will die today because they lack any form of health coverage. In a year’s time, I will graduate from college and join the teeming ranks of the American uninsured.

Frankly, I am terrified at the depths of our inefficiency.

The US Government’s privatization of war has taken a turn for the sleazy in Afghanistan, according to this article from Mother Jones. In a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, The Project on Government Oversight detailed a wide range of frat house antics perpetrated by private contractors (read: mercenaries) of ArmorGroup North America while guarding the US embassy in Kabul. According to Mother Jones, offences committed by the Government-employed mercenaries include “Drunken brawls, prostitutes, hazing and humiliation, taking vodka shots out of buttcracks.”

A typical scene in the American Embassy?

That’s right. Buttshots of vodka in the US Embassy in Kabul. Of course, this sort of Girls Gone Wild behavior pales in comparison to some of the more heinous acts committed by mercenaries in government employ, most notably the 2007 massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians by trigger-happy Blackwater troopers. However, in a country as conservative and Muslim as Afghanistan, the fallout from news of ArmorGroup’s antics will hardly help with the efforts of the US Military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to win the trust and support of the Afghan public. In the face of growing dissatisfaction with widespread corruption, and a rapidly-expanding Taliban insurgency, this news will only serve to increase already widespread resentment against those who many view as foreign occupiers.

Beyond the immediate consequences for American and ISAF soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, these incidents highlight the folly of the increasingly popular practice of the American military of outsourcing jobs that would normally be filled by American troops to outside mercenaries. On the surface, the policy seems to make a sort of shortsighted sense. Hiring a private contractor to guard an embassy or diplomatic convoy frees up more soldiers to actively hunt insurgents and engage in combat operations. The American military is all-volunteer, with no conscripts and anemic recruitment figures. With an enormous portion of their resources devoted to fighting two wars, the military needs all the help it can get.

This highlights another problematic area in America’s military machine. Many of the men and women who sign up with corporations such as ArmorGroup and Xe (formerly Blackwater – they quietly changed their name in the midst of the PR fallout following the 2007 massacre) do so motivated by the higher wages and better benefits these companies offer in comparison to the military. The consequence of this is less oversight for these mercenaries and, judging from their affinity for bodyshots and bloodbaths, decreased discipline. The news of these incidents spreads and further ravages the reputation, not of the companies themselves, but of the American war machine and government they are associated with. In wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where winning favorable public opinion is paramount, these actions are completely inexcusable.

A possible solution to this problem is to raise the wages and improve the benefits offered to American soldiers. I am not advocating an increase in military spending – quite the opposite, in fact. The budget of the Department of Defense is inexcusably bloated, and an overall reduction of its spending would free up funds for other programs, such as education and healthcare. However, a readjustment of spending within the Department itself could do much to free up funds for grunts on the ground. The American military today is run by men who seem to still have one foot in the Cold War mentality of the 1980s. Multibillion dollar B-2 bombers and crackpot plans to shoot down missiles with laser beams from space are of little use to soldiers fighting a guerilla war in underarmored Humvees. Clearly, some fiscal soul-searching is needed in the Pentagon.

This trend of privatization of the military is deeply worrisome. And it doesn’t merely extend to the Department of Defense. Privatization extends to a shockingly diverse array of aspects of American life, including the prison system. This raises tough questions. Corporations exist for the benefit of themselves and their shareholders, not the American government or its foreign policy. Who are these people really serving? If we are going to employ them, can we at least implement some sort of effective oversight policy? Satisfactory answers to these questions are conspicuously absent.

Since his death late Tuesday night, tributes to Ted Kennedy have been sprouting up from politicians, bloggers, and NGOs from all corners of The Internet. These tributes all sound heartfelt in their praises of Kennedy, even those of his political opposites. After all, the man was renown for his ability at working between squabbling parties in the Senate. Also, quite simply, America loves its Kennedys.

It is this love of the Kennedys that I find particularly interesting. The family has an exceptionally striking public image; they manage to appear both dignified and glamorous. Even a little fun. They have been a dominant force in American politics for close to half a century, and yet they still seem like good people. Even Republicans say nice things about them from time to time.

And of course, there is Camelot. The violent deaths of John and Robert Kennedy in the 60s hold a tragic potency in the public memory. They are remembered as young, attractive, likable men with lovely families. Unpleasant memories, like the Bay of Pigs debacle are supplanted by images of JFK Jr. (another Kennedy to meet a young death) saluting his father’s passing coffin. We, as a country love the Kennedy’s. We love the glamour, the sad drama of young potential wiped out and of a political dynasty spanning decades of conflict, on both a political and a personal scale.

It is these personal conflicts and stories that made the Kennedys the first family of a new era of American politics. They were our first political superstars. John F. Kennedy came to political prominence at a time when the first elements of what is now a vast media network were beginning to converge. Information about the Kennedys flooded printed news, the radio and, most importantly, television. This last source was the most crucial. The Kennedys were nice people, and appeared to lead a wholesome and loving life. Pictures of John sailing, or of JFK Jr. playing under his father’s desk in the Oval Office had just as much influence on public opinion as more explicitly political events, such as John Kennedy’s debates with Nixon (although the flop sweat and grumpy demeanor of Nixon did do much to highlight the attractive, pleasant appearance of Kennedy).

Thanks to this revolutionary convergence of technology and the press, the personal life of the Kennedy’s was scrutinized more than that of any previous individuals in American politics. This scrutiny backfired from time to time, such as the Chappaquiddick incident that haunted much of Ted Kennedy’s political career. Fueled by the proliferation of information by the news media, and its manipulation by skilled hands, the incident cast enough of a shadow to crush his only attempted run for the Presidency, in 1980.

The way in which Americans examine politics today stems from the Kennedys, and the mythology surrounding their Camelot. Much of this mythology, of course, was rather deliberately encouraged by the Kennedys themselves. One doesn’t get to the White House without being ambitious. The Kennedys posed for the cameras in a way few have been able to match.

I don’t mean for statements such as these to at all belittle the memory of Edward Kennedy. He was a great man who lived a remarkable life, and the praises circulating in his name are all well deserved. His death also holds significance in that he is the last of a group of three brothers whose lives changed the expectations the public holds of its politicians. No longer can a President become stuck in the bathroom without a skewering by the public (sorry, President Taft). Blowjobs and college drug experiences can be just as crucial in winning an election as legislative records and party platforms. Of course, I am not implying that politicians weren’t petty before television and The Internet. Personal jabs have always been a part of politics. However, it was not until the convergence of television and, later, The Internet that personal information on our politicians could be spread so quickly, and so widely. By so capturing the attention of these distributors of information, the Kennedys changed the American political arena irreversibly. The death of Ted Kennedy is both poignant, in the sadness over the passing of a good man, and provocative; it marks the passing of the last of a group of people who forever changed the way politicians and the media relate to each other in America.