In the end, the sheer size of this country, and the differences within it, may defeat the attempts of the current US government to make the US over. It’s going to falter on two facts: individuals do not always and everywhere behave as members of the classes to which they belong, and the US is fractally diverse.

On the first fact: I am relatively conservative, both financially, legally, and socially. I fit many of the stereotypes of the right-wing republican voter (this has led to some heated discussions with some of my friends, family and so-on at times).  But I believe gay marriage ought to be legal, the death penalty should not be used, and that banning abortions by power of law is a waste of effort. And I am not unusual. There are enough people out there who will go along with people who share many of their same views to make it appear that there’s a large base of support for almost anything; this is the basis of political parties in the US, and one of the reasons the 2-party system in the US has continued for as long as it has (almost the entire political history of the US). So for a 10,000 ft overview, the crowds look like they’re made up of people. Get down to it, and it’s not people, it’s individuals.

That brings me to the second fact:

The US is fractally diverse. I’m riffing on Neal Stephenson here (who once described the life of one of his villains as fractally weird; that is to say each part of his life, when examined piecemeal, was as weird as the entire life.) The US is an incredibly diverse nation; more so than any other (non-imperial) nation in history. (The Roman & British Empires could claim such a diversity, at least in relationship to the rest of the world at the time – but the Roman empire was not a nation as we would understand it; and the British Empire was emphatically NOT a nation). As you zoom in on the component parts of the US, the diversity stays the same; even down to neighborhoods in a single city.

Vive la differance!