I think what you mean is that the people indirectly dictate the rules, including of course the people who run nodes. Which is exactly what I said.
The point I'm making is that the influence of a non-mining node by itself is zero. Consider:
A. You have 100 mining nodes. If you unplug 99 of them, you objectively have less ability to influence / enforce the rule set.
B. You have 100 raspberry-pi (non mining) nodes. If you unplug 99 of them, your ability to influence / enforce the rule set is unchanged.
If you understand PoW, the truth of this should be very obvious.
Yes, I agree if you arbitrarily split the person from the node, but Bitcoin is a complex system, a node is an expression of your choice of rules, the human is inextricably linked into the system, and splitting the tech from the human is sort of pointless.
Its like having the president of the USA but nobody listens to him. Trump is barking out orders with perfect legal authority, but every person in the US decides to ignore him.
You could stick to the rules and say Trump is in charge, but we can all see the truth.