Breakdown of Power is a series of articles regarding the breakdown of power structures in each country around the globe. It is concentrated mostly to identify, analyze and quantify multiple power structures that exist for “holding power” in each country, and exerting authority.
The theory behind these series of articles is that the majority of power rests primarily behind three institutions of government: the military, police and intelligence services.
The theory states that in order for a government to hold power, they need an armed wing willing to exert violence upon the masses in order to maintain order and control over it’s territory and established sense of authority, that is also more powerful and resourceful than any existing armed organization within it’s territorial borders by at least a factor of 3 in order to maintain power and minimal amounts of peace.
The pen needs the sword in order to be mighty. Without the sword, the pen’s written word can be challenged and overruled by anyone.
We will further sub-divide an analysis into three segments:
- The identification, quantification and analysis of official bodies, such as the military, police and intelligence services
- The identification, quantification and analysis of unofficial bodies loyal to government rule, such as armed militias and paramilitary organizations, gangs and local pockets of registered gun owners, or “loyalists” or “potential loyalists”
- The identification, quantification and analysis of unseen bodies, such as politicians, judges, lawyers, business people, celebrities, mass media owners, religious figures, professors and other community leaders, as well as their probable successors
The reason for these are as follows:
- Military, police and intelligence services receive funding based on taxes collected from the general public. Most people can agree that the police and military are mostly benevolent organizations established in their community officially recognized by the majority of people as a hegemonic authoritative body. Most of it’s relationships to people in the community is a result of inheritance of rule, brainwashing by the schools, community and mass media that normalizes it’s status and attempts to remove any doubt as to it’s legitimacy, as well as through systematic displays of efficacy and well meaning, showing that in what the people are taught to be morally right actions that benefit them and minimize collateral damage, unintended or unforeseen consequences, is in actuality something that is practiced by military, police and intelligence services on a regular basis, holding themselves and their employees at a high standard, and receiving extensive vetting treatments to ensure this is not just a ploy. Therefore, they have the largest pool of resources available to them by default, and by design, unless challenged by a stronger opponent.
- Armed militias, gangs, registered gun owners and other potential loyalists in the community are often community based, vigilante organizations, that decide to exist despite opposition and pressure from official sources of power, such as the military, police and intelligence services. Depending on the laws of the land, the willingness or capability of the official bodies to enforce them, these organizations can often go unchecked and unenforced for heinous crimes, or are shut down as soon as they are found out to exist. They serve a purpose and can do things that the official bodies cannot be allowed to do, and in the end the official bodies can turn on them to prosecute and execute it’s members as a show of good will towards the public to punish them for crimes, after the job has been completed that the official bodies had difficulty in achieving. Sometimes they are sell swords and mercenaries. They can be bought or coerced into supporting the official bodies, such as with a street gang that usually has no political motivations yet eyes and ears in the community, or a politically motivated militia including terrorist groups that are more clandestine by nature than a street gang, but usually much better trained and well armed, given the nature of it’s work compared to a street gang.
- The people in the community most likely to defend their comfort are unseen bodies, that usually hold a lot of power in civilian society but only have the power of the pen, not usually taking matters into their own hands but tasked with out talking, out speaking and out writing their opponents, and winning a war of the wits, exerting soft power, holding economic, political and social positions of influence, and to calculate that their official bodies are likely to come out the victors will vehemently support their official bodies, usually for quid pro quo, which would be illegal or unethical under democratic societies, but tend to happen anyways. The people who benefit the most from the way things are are most likely to defend those who make it so. There is always a small portion, as with the official bodies and unofficial bodies, who would have second thoughts.