We humans … all of us … have built-in defense mechanisms that allow us to tune out certain things.  If you walk frequently in a city, you have likely learned to tune out the homeless person sitting against a building, hoping someone will stop and offer him a meal.  When we pick up our child at school, we rarely notice that tall kid with the holes in his shoes, or the skinny child whose clothes are two sizes too big, or the child being pushed to the bus in a wheelchair.  We become inured to things that would bother us, would disturb our vision of the world we live in, perhaps even give us a twinge of guilt for our own well-being relative to others.

Most of our politicians today are wealthy by almost any standards and have always been so.  They do not notice us … until election day. …