# What's the bare minimum it would it take to overthrow the US Government? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 31, 2013, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569 "2013-12-31T16:12:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/61 "2013-12-31T21:16:28Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > HIS point wasn’t that they failed, but that he doubted they’d ever be willing to take up arms in the first place. It seems that they were willing, or at least the Iranian regime believed they were willing enough to have them executed. Not exactly, my point was even though the pilots in question were contemplating a Coup de Etat they had not done it when arrested. They then found out their country was under attack and volunteered to defend it even though they despised the Islamist Government. The same applies to the US. There might be a significant portion of the Military that despises Obama, wants him gone etc. but the moment bombs go of on US soil all that goes out the window. To paraphrase the CT Movie “Shooter” “You may not like the President but you like the idea of a President”. Troops vote, ya know. **Capt** ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/62 "2013-12-31T21:20:35Z")
> [@Capt\_Kirk](#): > > To paraphrase the CT Movie “Shooter” “You may not like the President but you like the idea of a President”. Another interesting example: “Shooter” a movie about a couple of guys who take up arms against (at least a portion of) a corrupt federal government. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/63 "2013-12-31T21:29:05Z")
Oh, I have read your posts, including the one where you do claim a paricular method of revolution (see Post #24). But with your bouncing between acknowledgement of how things wouldn’t work, your defense of things you even acknowledge as ‘highly unlikely’, and the introduction of ‘new hypotheticals’, I have to admit I can’t follow your logic that well. Especially when it goes from “something that’s not actually going to happen…” to “but it might.” It’s a good topic, man, but your debating style puts it into the realm of “TL, DR”. We agree on the one point (elections), but I think you’re going to have to suggest something far more imaginative outside of that. An no, I don’t think the NSA or DoD is gonna come looking for you. 🙂 Tripler Yeah, its totally _your_ revolution. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/64 "2013-12-31T21:32:27Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > One guy (Dorner) put all the LEOs in southern California into a frenzy (and they even knew who he was!). The two Boston Marathon bombers did the same in Boston. They each consumed the attention of thousands and thousands of LEOs. Now imagine not just one or two Dorners, but 10,000 or 100,000 or 3 million, all acting within the same couple of days, dressed in plain clothes, hiding among the civilian population. Do you think the federal government would be effective in such an environment? The reason the cops went into a frenzy is precisely because they didn’t have anything better to do. Of course the responses in both cases were ludicrously over the top. That sort of bombing and shooting cops goes on all day every day in some countries, and it doesn’t bring down the government, the government just shrugs and hires a couple more cops to replace the dead ones. Again, such a thing cannot bring down the government unless the people believe that it shows that the government has failed. As for thousands of people working together, that’s where the aforementioned NSA goons are really going to earn their pay. One guy who goes nuts and starts shooting at cops is hard to find because he’s one guy. Two brothers who build a bomb in their garage are hard to find because they are two brothers who only talk about their plans at home in the garage. Thousands of people building bombs and planning a simultaneous bombing campaign need coordination, they must communicate. They have parents who get suspicious, neighbors who get suspicious, bosses who get suspicious. And how do they “hide among the civilian population”, unless the civilian population supports them? And if the civilian population supports them, then why didn’t they vote the bums out of office rather than shooting them? And how are bombing campaigns against civilians going to help the insurgents to, you know, win hearts and minds? And, you know, blend in with the civilian population? They only blend in when the civilians protect them. When the civilians are helping the cops hunt them down they don’t blend. How can the guerilla fish sink back into the sea of the peasant population when the peasants hate and abominate the guerillas? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/65 "2013-12-31T22:01:18Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The reason the cops went into a frenzy is precisely because they didn’t have anything better to do. Of course the responses in both cases were ludicrously over the top. That sort of bombing and shooting cops goes on all day every day in some countries, and it doesn’t bring down the government, the government just shrugs and hires a couple more cops to replace the dead ones. For a revolution to be “successful” it might need to kill a lot more than a couple of cops. One Dorner obviously wouldn’t do it, but 100,000 probably could. 3 million almost certainly could. There are something like 800,000 LEOs in the US. If something happened to turn 1% of the population into trigger pullers in a revolution and another 10% into sympathizers, and each trigger puller only fired a couple of rounds, that would still be 6 million rounds for 800,000 LEO’s. > [@Lemur866](#): > > And how do they “hide among the civilian population”, unless the civilian population supports them? And if the civilian population supports them, then why didn’t they vote the bums out of office rather than shooting them? See the aforementioned 1% & 10%. > [@Lemur866](#): > > And how are bombing campaigns against civilians going to help the insurgents to, you know, win hearts and minds? I doubt it would, and I don’t think I suggested such a tactic. I suspect randomly killing civilians, like Al Qaeda does, would hardly endear the bombers to anyone. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/66 "2013-12-31T22:16:49Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > For a revolution to be “successful” it might need to kill a lot more than a couple of cops. One Dorner obviously wouldn’t do it, but 100,000 probably could. 3 million almost certainly could. There are something like 800,000 LEOs in the US. If something happened to turn 1% of the population into trigger pullers in a revolution and another 10% into sympathizers, and each trigger puller only fired a couple of rounds, that would still be 6 million rounds for 800,000 LEO’s I see we’re back to using the magic wand again. Get real, please. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/67 "2013-12-31T22:25:37Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I see we’re back to using the magic wand again. Get real, please. Did you read the OP? In it I said, “For reasons shrouded in mystery (perhaps it’s Bronies, ObamaCare, or [MoveOn.org](http://MoveOn.org) just decided to go for broke one day - the cause isn’t important) the time has come to water the tree of liberty once again. You’re in charge, you can order your minions to obtain whatever personnel, equipment, or circumstances are necessary to succeed, and they’ll faithfully execute whatever strategy you decide upon.” The point was to focus on what it would take to succeed, not which scenarios were likely to occur (none of them are, I suspect, as several of you have already pointed out). If you want to call that a “magic wand,” go ahead, but please make at least a limited effort to understand the point of the thread before you shit all over it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/68 "2013-12-31T22:39:21Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Maybe instead of Timothy McVeigh wanna-be’s they’re several dozen Jihadists that got their act together enough to make effective bombs and coordinate an attack. We’re not about to lock up all the Muslims in camps and start interrogating them a la Bruce Willis in “The Siege” are we? The worst incident that included Jihadists so far showed that those kinds of acts are coordinated from the outside. Timothy McVeigh followers are home grown, and a different matter. Still, there are so many eyes on the Muslims nowadays that many times the few that nowadays make plots are nabbed by undercover agents that logic tells me include Muslims that are American citizens too. Of course I have to notice here that if by any chance one could see something as big as what you propose in your fictional scenario that people like that would never had a chance to influence most people into overthrowing the US government. If we are talking possibilities I would still go for the home grown groups to be the most likely to make a move like that as part of an effort to overthrow the government, and I still think a terror act like that would not create sympathy for their cause. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/69 "2013-12-31T22:45:22Z")
And I keep telling you that a revolution _cannot_ be designed until you give us the reason for it. What parts do you want overthrown? What do you want left? Do you want death, desolation and despair, or do you want a joyous and triumphant public? ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/70 "2013-12-31T22:54:02Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > For a revolution to be “successful” it might need to kill a lot more than a couple of cops. One Dorner obviously wouldn’t do it, but 100,000 probably could. 3 million almost certainly could. There are something like 800,000 LEOs in the US. If something happened to turn 1% of the population into trigger pullers in a revolution and another 10% into sympathizers, and each trigger puller only fired a couple of rounds, that would still be 6 million rounds for 800,000 LEO’s. And again, people \*like \*cops, because our brothers/sisters/fathers/mothers/sons/daughters are cops. I can’t think of a faster way have a revolution beat down than to attract the ire of the common man. And boy, would there be ire. If a revolutionary group takes up arms against America, even if a lot of Americans agree with them, they’ll disagree with their tactics. It won’t work. It might be destructive and last for decades, but if the stated goal is overthrowing the government, it will backfire gloriously, as people will throw their support behind the government. As I see it, there are 2 options. One, have the revolution be so popular that it’s bloodless. The anti-revolutionaries would realize at the outset that public opinion is against them and step down. A new government emerges. Of course, we have lots of bloodless changes of power in this country, they’re called elections. Option two is complete destruction of the military followed by the savage subjugation of American citizens. The military force required to pull this off would be staggering. It would likely involve either alien technology, or a small militia group somehow inventing Skynet. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/71 "2013-12-31T22:55:15Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > And I keep telling you that a revolution _cannot_ be designed until you give us the reason for it. What parts do you want overthrown? What do you want left? Do you want death, desolation and despair, or do you want a joyous and triumphant public? Did you see the definition of “success” in the OP? ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/72 "2013-12-31T22:58:07Z")
OK, when was the last time that a government with armed forces even remotely comparable with the U.S. armed forces was overthrown and replaced with a new system of government? Yes, it was in 1991-1992, when the government of the Soviet Union was overthrown, and replaced with governments of the separate former Soviet republics. How much military action dd it take? Practically none. Soviet Army tanks rolled in the streets of Moscow, but they didn’t shoot anybody or anything. As others have said in this thread, to overthrow a government you need to win hearts and minds, and not necessarily bomb or shoot any one. If the people of the U.S. stopped believing in the government of the U.S. like those Soviet citizens did in 1991, then the government of the U.S. would be overthrown and replaced. However, nothing would do it without that kind of change of heart. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/73 "2013-12-31T23:04:46Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Did you see the definition of “success” in the OP? And I will tell you as well, that a revolution, without a reason, _or an endstate_ isn’t just not worthy of an educated discussion, it’s impossible to discuss because it’s undefineable. You have too many variables of national power in question to even fathom what you define as “success.” Your OP does not define the parameters of a realistic, enduring “success” (the ends), but you ask “How would you overthrow the government?” (the means). You cannot ask how to get there if you don’t define where you’re going. Tripler I agree with Clausewitz: “Only fools and madmen start wars purely for the sake of fighting.” [sub]paraphrased[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/74 "2013-12-31T23:08:23Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > For a revolution to be “successful” it might need to kill a lot more than a couple of cops. One Dorner obviously wouldn’t do it, but 100,000 probably could. 3 million almost certainly could. There are something like 800,000 LEOs in the US. If something happened to turn 1% of the population into trigger pullers in a revolution and another 10% into sympathizers, and each trigger puller only fired a couple of rounds, that would still be 6 million rounds for 800,000 LEO’s. But, like, 3 million people shooting at cops is a, you know, army. I mean, if you can wave a magic wand and turn 3 million people into fanatical anti-government killers, and 30 million people into anti-government-killer-applauders, then you’ve got an army twice as big as actual US military and a support system 20 times as big. Thing is, these cop-killers don’t just wake up one day and decide to kill cops for no reason. They don’t shoot people for no reason. Yes, sometimes the reason is their brain chemistry went haywire and they went nuts and started shooting people for no reason. That counts as a reason to shoot people for no reason. But that happens one nutcase at a time, not thousands at a time. And even when people turn into homicidal nutcases they don’t invariably target government officials, often they target random people at shopping malls or schools. And homicidal nutcases aren’t the basis of a revolution that can topple a government unless the government is so unstable that it can collapse over any little thing. So like, a group of guys can shoot Archduke Ferdinand and set off World War One. But that could only happen because Europe was primed and ready to fight a war. Perhaps the war could have been defused after the assassination but the point is that nobody wanted to defuse the war, they wanted to fight, and so the war began and lots of countries and empires were overthrown as a consequence. That doesn’t mean that just because one time a Serbian shot a guy and eventually the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was overthrown that anybody with a gun can shoot the right person and overthrown a government. Lots of people get shot every day and very few governments collapse afterward. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/75 "2013-12-31T23:10:14Z")
> [@steronz](#): > > people \*like \*cops … people will throw their support behind the government. I don’t think “people” are quite such a monolithic group. Example: even while Chris Dorner was in the midst of a declared war on the LAPD, in which he’d gunned down some _family members_ of a cop (a tactic I think many would find even more despicable than targeting cops directly), hashtags like #WeRChrisDorner and #IStandWithDorner were trending on Twitter and Facebook groups supporting him popped up right and left ([link](http://www.vocativ.com/02-2013/domestic-terrorist-or-jason-bourne-the-growing-online-movement-supporting-an-accused-cop-killer/)). Yes, many people condemned his actions, but a not insignificant number supported / applauded / praised him. Another example: Snowden committed what many might consider treason, and yet there’s a still some base of support for the traitor even here in America. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/76 "2013-12-31T23:17:30Z")
If Snowden had bombed a day care center rather than released classified documents then maybe people would have different opinions about him. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/77 "2013-12-31T23:22:11Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > And I will tell you as well, that a revolution, without a reason, _or an endstate_ isn’t just not worthy of an educated discussion, it’s impossible to discuss because it’s undefineable. You have too many variables of national power in question to even fathom what you define as “success.” > > Your OP does not define the parameters of a realistic, enduring “success” (the ends), but you ask “How would you overthrow the government?” (the means). You cannot ask how to get there if you don’t define where you’re going. I outlined one possible endstate in Post #12: 50 independent nations, divided along current state lines, no more federal government. Another possibility: a military dictatorship, also no more federal government (at least not in its current form). ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/78 "2013-12-31T23:24:42Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > If Snowden had bombed a day care center rather than released classified documents then maybe people would have different opinions about him. Probably, but then again, Dorner shot a bride-to-be and her betrothed in a parking garage, just to get back at her (possibly crooked) cop dad, and got thousands of likes on Facebook for it. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/79 "2013-12-31T23:59:01Z")
What percentage of Facebook is that? ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569/80 "2014-01-01T00:04:45Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I outlined one possible endstate in Post #12: 50 independent nations, divided along current state lines, no more federal government. We already fought that war, and you would never maintain fifty independent entities. Commerce alone would require them to coalesce together for another Union and Confederation, if not reunite altogether. > [@](#): > > Another possibility: a military dictatorship, also no more federal government (at least not in its current form). I already pointed out that a military dictatorship is precluded by civilian continuity of government plans, and the inherent doctrine and integrity of its military members. This is where you insulted their intelligence, by insinuating they’d be power-hungry to oppress the population they’d sworn to protect (even though we’ve already learned our lessons about occupation). . . . and as I finished this, I realized you’re just going to continue in circles with the hypotheticals that don’t really answer any questions or offer alternatives to legitimate objections. Tripler Please tell us _why_ this thing kicked off, otherwise its over before it begins. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bare-minimum-it-would-it-take-to-overthrow-the-us-government/677569.md?page=5)