[Retra]

I don't understand these distinctions. North Korea doesn't control its population with only boots on the ground, it controls it by controlling the border (with ships), the political arena (with nukes), and by controlling infrastructure like roads, food distribution, media (with tanks, artillery, and manpower.) The US government doesn't need to control every person to control the population, it just needs to control its strategic assets, and it can do that with drones, bombs, tanks, etc just fine. If you can't get food because your crops are defoliated and your roads are barricaded, you're not resisting for very long.

Anyway, the argument here is as much about the government controlling the people as it is about the people controlling the government. If the US government turned against its own people militarily, the only way you could recover is if you could regain control of the military and turn it back against the government or if you could somehow get a more powerful military to overthrow it. A revolution from within can only succeed if it controls the actual military.