On the perceived omnipotence of the US Federal Government

I'd actually like to expand on this article by Larken Rose a bit:https://steemit.com/anarchism/@larkenrose/a-tyrant-s-eye-view
I think the force correlation and focus on numbers of weapons and armed individuals, while true insofar as they go, misses some important things.

First of all, while there is the whole "unlimited budget" of the Federal Government, two things are important:

1. While it is in fact a vast budget overall, it is still finite. Yes, they can just "print" more money, but doing so is not without cost to them. There are real consequences for doing so--consequences of which they are generally aware, and which do them more harm more quickly than one might otherwise imagine.

2. While it is a finite but vast budget overall, remember that the vast budget must be divided and distributed to a vast (seemingly infinite) number of agencies, bureaus, sub-units, etc. And few if any of those assorted penny-packet divisions get along with each other, play well together, or cooperate at all well. Remember: for all the size of the "Defense" budget, it must be divided between the Army, Air Force, and Navy. Then the Navy must split off some of theirs to the Marine Corps. And all must divide their now smaller budget between every individual unit--from Armies and Fleets and so on, all the way down to the lowest company-sized unit (platoons and squads usually don;t have their own separate budgets).

Thus, the vast budget pretty quickly winnows away to pretty small individual unit budgets--which then must purchase the items they use at government prices--$600 toilet seats and $300 screws and such.

Second, there is the whole OODA Loop thing--which I can explain separately if you aren't already familiar.

Third, there is the illusion of the technological prowess of the Federal Government, created by cooperation of their propaganda wings in Hollyweird and NYC. In the movies and on TV, the Feds always have the bleeding-edge tech, readily available.

In reality, the FBI can't even manage to provide itself with a functioning email system, and agents, far from having the latest laptops available for their work, generally are required to share obsolete desktop PCs with several other agents.

The NSA spent a couple of billion dollars and a decade building an entire sub-basement super computer at FT Meade, which, when construction was finished, the contractor went out of business before it could be programmed. The NSA then had to hire another contractor--after a couple of years of the secret government contract bid process, to come in, spend a couple of years reverse-engineering the hardware, so they could develop a programming language to actually make the computer functional. So the NSA finally got a functional, but not fully tested and debugged, super computer about 15 years after construction began. How bleeding-edge do you think the capabilities of that computer are?

Remember the Arab-American student in CA (or was it WA?) whose mechanic found the FBI tracking device on his car a few years ago? It was the size of an old D-cell Mag light. THAT is their tech level--and you know that device was in the several thousand dollar price range for them, and had to be specially requested and authorized from higher HQ, and was in severely limited availability...

Remember Fat Man and Little Boy--the Feds wanted to show off their latest high-tech weapons. They dropped one, then dropped the second to prove it wasn't a fluke-- "We've got more than one of these! You'd better watch out!"--but in fact they'd shot their wad with the second. They weren't able to produce the fissionable material to make another for a long time after. And even though they still make nukes, the tech is more crude than you might imagine, and more prone to maintenance problems which render much more of the stockpile nonfunctional than you might imagine.

And of course, having nukes when you need scalpels doesn't do you much good.

There is so much more I could add...

For example, despite having a lot of people on staff, the government lacks COMPETENT and SKILLED people on staff, for several reasons. Some examples:

The FBI can't staff its CyberCrime/CyberTerrorism division with Computer experts. They can hire plenty of LEOs, and plenty of clerical staff, and other support staff, but not Computer Techs--the very people who are essential to actual function. Why? Because they can't hire anyone who has used drugs--even just Marijuana. If your primary requirement for hiring a programmer/tech is that they can't have EVER used MJ... Well, I'm not going to say you won't find ANY, but you're not going to find many--and of those, how many don't have some other issue making them ineligible or undesirable, and how many would be willing to leave the private sector to work a government drudge job with none of the autonomy they can get in the private sector?

I shouldn't keep picking on the FBI, but they're such easy targets. If you aren't gonna kick a man while he's down, well, when are you gonna kick him? It is the best time, after all...

Anyway, the requirement to attend the FBI Academy at Quantico is that you already have a college degree--fine, not all that abnormal. But just any degree will not do. Traditionally, to be an actual sworn FBI agent, they preferred Law decrees or Accounting degrees. So right away, you're selecting for folks with those degrees who can’t find more attractive positions in the private sector.

Now I know, it's not just about money--but a new FBI agent starts as a GS-10 and makes about $43K/year, before taxes. So they have spent between 4 and 7 years minimum working on a college degree, racking up student loans most likely, and then another 21 weeks minimum at the FBI Academy, for $43K and a job which, frankly, isn't nearly as interesting and exciting and fulfilling as it might look on TV. You don't get to work with the best people or equipment, and you have to constantly deal with scum (bureaucrats) and criminals. If you don't have a significantly better offer than that after getting a Law or Accounting degree, well...

The FBI also has to compete with many other Government Agencies for the limited quantity of Linguists who can pass Security Clearance requirements--which doesn’t sound bad at first, unless you are familiar with those requirements.

As mentioned before, they can’t hire anyone who has ever used drugs, including MJ.

How many Americans do you know who know even one foreign language well enough to be a translator? I say Americans, because it is extremely difficult for foreign nationals--even those who have become naturalized American Citizens--to get a security clearance.

For that matter, even being married to a foreign national or naturalized citizen can be a major block to getting a security clearance--now how many of those Americans with a foreign language fluency still pass?

Even when hiring Linguists, foreign travel is considered suspicious--especially travel to those areas in which languages are spoken which are most in demand by the Feds. Yeah, we all know lots of folks who studied some French, German, Spanish, even Latin maybe... The languages they really don’t need. How many Americans do you know who speak Pashtun, Urdu, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Russian, Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish... And if you do know an American who speaks those languages, how many of them haven’t traveled to the countries in which they are spoken enough to make a spook doing background checks suspicious?

Now I know that doesn’t seem relevant to operations in the US, but consider what that means they must do given the shortage of such specialists: They have to either spend time and money sending people they’ve already hired to American-based language courses in order to become minimally fluent; or they have to rely on entering classified documents by hand into their unsecure PCs and using Google Translate...yeah, that’s a security violation.

And since so much of their interest is in those areas, and they have a deep backlog of material, and even though they put lots of staff on those areas... Not much success.

Now these areas sound like they’d be of more interest to the CIA and NSA, right?

Well, those agencies compete with the FBI for available linguists, but the FBI is the primary Counter-Intelligence Agency for the US--meaning they don’t operate only domestically, and they have to deal with international crimes which are tied to the US, and with the crimes in immigrant and refugee communities in the US... meaning even though they have a large staff, it is over worked and spread thin.

As for the Military, well there we have to talk like professionals: amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.

The force structure of the US Military is very different from TV/Movies. In the world of Hollyweird, everyone who has spent 15 minutes in the military is a superhuman killing machine, capable of planning and executing infinitely complex operations and having easy and unquestioned access to multi-millions of dollars of hi-tech and potent weaponry.

Believe it or not, that ain’t the standard.

First of all, only about 1 out of 12 people who join the Army or Marines actually ends up in a combat job--meaning as an actual shooter of some sort. The other 11 are in what’s called Support or Service Support. Basically, these are the folks who do all the work to support the actual shooters--that 1 out of a dozen. This includes mechanics, truck drivers, clerks, cooks, water treatment specialists, computer geeks, etc. etc. It also includes illustrators, camera jockeys, musicians, and so on.

So while they all attend Basic Training--which is REALLY BASIC: they learn to march, wear their uniform properly, do exercise the Army way, and hopefully learn enough about an M-16 (I guess it’s M-4 these days) to not shoot themselves by accident--they aren’t really trained to be actual shooters (despite propaganda to the contrary).

Now even those one out of a dozen I’ve referred to as “shooters” include Tankers, Artillerymen, Air Defense, etc.--in other words, not actual riflemen. And while any prospective civil war may well include some instances requiring those types, the primary need of the Federal Forces would be Infantry and MPs. They’ll also require loads of Aviation in the form of helicopters--which is another whole topic by itself--one I’ll avoid now for brevity’s (Ha!) sake.

And they’ll also need all; those support folks--because the modern US Infantryman (or MP) can’t operate without a HUGE, BLOATED Logistics “tail.” The standard (Non-Airborne, Non-Ranger, Non-Special Forces--just straight-leg Poor Bloody Infantry) combat soldier in the US Military today requires metric-ass-tonnes of batteries, fuel, spare parts, etc., not to mention bullets, bombs, and beans (ammo and food). All of which has to be transported, and guarded, and which is a primary target for anyone who opposes them.

Now, consider that these are gonna be American kids in American uniforms being asked to be the boot-on-the-neck shooting Americans...

I’m not going to say all of them will refuse--they won’t.

But if you think suicides, fratricides, PTSD, AWOLs, and desertions are a problem now...