The media brouhaha over this administration's "State of the Union" has created a false impression that something has happened. Yet most Americans who pay even glancing attention know that this administration has been steadfast in its policies all year. In fact it has pursued the same course since their inauguration after the controversial Florida 2000 election.

Once in office, this administration has pursued an anti-regulation, pro-traditional energy, pro-military agenda. They immediately ruled out signing the global warming Kyoto treaty, and Vice-President Dick Cheney created an energy taskforce to develop policy by consulting corporations only, especially oil executives. After a long battle, a modified Cheney energy-plan was passed by Congress in 2005.

From day one this administration intended to skyrocket U.S. military spending. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush raised a $290 billion budget for the U.S. Defense Department for fiscal 2001 to $331 billion for fiscal 2002. That is $40 billion that could have gone to health care coverage, for health care is in crisis for working Americans today. Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has skyrocketed Defense Department (DoD) spending. It was an estimated $444 billion for fiscal 2005, according to The White House's own fiscal 2006 budget at www.whitehouse.gov/omb.

It has been an acceleration, not a change in direction. It represents a $150 billion build-up since Clinton for annual spending. In addition, funding for Iraq and Afghanistan has been appropriated through emergency measures not counted in DoD budgets.

The White House estimates its 2010 DoD budget will be $485 billion.

No one needs to hear the "State of the Union" to understand what is happening.

II.
There is nothing more fructifying then spending time with people you care about. These days it is like drinking from strong roots while above, on the ground, an ill wind rages.

The "State of the Union" message surely contained words about "good," "evil," "democracy," "staying the course," and other etcetera. I've yet to read the transcript. In the mainstream media they will debate whether the speech was "optimistic" or not about the same old facts.

Using the Internet as part of my workday, I keep coming into contact with snippets of his speech vomited out across the information superhighway. I duck and weave, duck and weave.

There must be deeper, more subtle and invisible everyday ways to exercise non-compliance with evil, a subject Gandhi wrote about at length.

There must be a revolution of everyday life out there through the haze of the lifestyle choices in VH1 and MTV music videos. While the 1960s protest movement has handed down a great legacy, it speaks the wrong language now. The new ways will be something else and somewhere else.

When the words of the official government and televised debate lack relation to reality, maybe we are living in a period of decadence. What is obvious and ubiquitous remains unspoken; what is official clamors like a pot calling the kettle black.

And so the kettle is disparaged whether that kettle is black, orange, white, or imaginary. If imaginary, it looms and expands. I wonder what the ramifications, definitions, and processes of American decadence are? I see it everyday in gas-guzzling SUVs; I hear it daily as companies cut people's medical care while granting their executives $20 million dollar exit bonuses....

Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." As I step out the door today after work, I will mediate on that.