Capturing the Voice(s) of the United States’ Society

The U.S. does not have “a society”; we have distinct cultures and belief systems. None of these cultures represents a majority of Americans. We are separated by our beliefs about the role of government, how to handle socioeconomic discrimination and the growing wage gap between the richest and poorest Americans, who counts in the list of those who are included in the Declaration of Independence preamble (“All men are created equal with certain inalienable rights”), the role of regulatory constraints in financial institutions and environment management (for example), and what it means for the U.S. to have international leadership. Many people identify with one position in one category but do not like another position that some might call part of the same culture. We can each speak for ourselves, but we cannot speak for an imagined single society in the United States.

Someone who claims to know what “American society” thinks and believes is likely talking just about his personal beliefs or his caricature of those who believe differently. For example, there are many people who voted for Donald Trump for some reasons but found some his beliefs, behaviors, and/or political positions wrong-headed or even reprehensible. Pundits talk about the desire of voters to stop governance by the political establishment. However, despite claims that people want to get rid of the political establishment, they voted for their establishment incumbents for the most part. (One must now include Tea Party politicians as their own establishment, of course. They’re not much different from any other politician demographic; they’ve become “established” too.)

We also have to consider that, in the 2016 presidential election, the popular vote was narrowly for Hillary Clinton. As far as the Electoral College goes, if we had proportional representation (the same number residents per electoral vote across states), the election outcome could have been quite different. For example, Wyoming has about 592,000 residents and 3 electoral votes. California has about 39,000,000 residents with 55 electoral votes. The country does not have a one person, one vote system for president. Wyoming has one vote per 197,000 people while California has one vote per 709,000 people. Of course, even the guidelines for how a state’s Electoral College representatives should vote varies and can be further evidence that we do not have a one person, one vote election process. This adds to a further difficulty in stating anything about our “society” based on who gets elected.