A seat at the table

As I scooted by, I thought I heard the bush talking to the chair....

I have chosen to pretty much ignore all of the political madness this year. It gets my blood pressure up. And the idea that it is actually a democratic process is so laughable as to be insane.

Once in a while, something seeps through the barrier into my awareness, usually via Jon Stewart or Facebook, as did the "news" that Clint Eastwood addressed an empty chair at the RNC, talking to it as if it were President Obama. It is spectacle like this that makes me embarrassed to be an American, to know that people all over the world are witnessing what we call a political process.

This process is run by hypocrisy and greed and has little to do with what 99% of US citizens actually need to have happen. We are distracted by shiny things, by nostalgic rhetoric, by lies repeated so often they sound like truths. We are conned into thinking we actually have a voice in this process, when in reality we are a bit like that chair - we have no seat at the table. We are without voice, without power and with very few in power who are willing to stand up for us, to fight for our rights, to tell the truth.

And there goes my blood pressure. When I took this photo this morning, politics was the furthest thing from my mind. I was loving the morning sun, the little dog sniffing around the tall grasses and prancing along in front of my scooter, September flowers soaking up late summer goodness, shadows shimmering on tree trunks. I was marveling at this old chair sitting on the sidewalk, scuffed and banged up, a hole in the seat, wondering if someone would come along and fix it up, put some time and care into it to make it whole again, to give it a seat at the table.