It's not the numbers, it's the people.

We are all one species, homo sapiens, all of us are people.  We're not 47% and we're not $5.3 trillion.  We're flesh and blood; we live and breathe, work and play, talk and listen, marry and have children, get sick, grow old and die.  All of us.

Our governments, it seems, insist on thinking of us as numbers.  And our leaders often appear to deny their relationship to the rest of us people.

We can't escape from one another, although some of us try.  We ride first class and drive luxury cars and live on the right side of the tracks, in gated and guarded communities, with all the amenities of success.  We make reservations in restaurants and hire publicists and trainers and bodyguards.

A genealogist knows the truth - we are all related, with common ancestors revealed by public records and DNA.  Perhaps some of us think of others of us as black sheep, but we're still kinfolk.

We can't be codified - we insist on being considered on a case-by-case basis.  Rules are meant to be broken, not people.

The root of the word 'democracy' means 'power to the people.'  To live up to its promise, democracy must be accountable to the people.  Elections merely enable politicians to compete for the favor of the electorate; accountability means the grievances of all individuals must be heard and adjudicated.  But we deny equal justice to all, and thereby we deny democracy.  "And how much justice can you afford?" is not just the caption of a New Yorker cartoon, it is a shocking revelation of the truth.

We all owe an obligation to humanity; we can't escape it by shielding ourselves behind the trappings of power.  We may never have visited a prison or a slum but our fellow humans are there.  It's all very well for the powerful to assert the blessings of rugged individualism; but if those blessings end up accruing merely to the few, it's not democracy, it's aristocracy, or brahminism, or outright tyranny.

Government is not about jobs or schools or taxes or deficits or laws or security or farms or filibusters or banks or markets.  It's about people.

The next time you read something filled with numbers ask yourself if those numbers merely serve to obscure the faces of unsuccessful humans.  Ask yourself how those numbers relate, not just to you (whoever you may be) but to everybody else.