I have kept away from this one for a while, but perhaps I can explain.
Col, you asked about the 800,000+ workers. No, that is NOT a lot of museums. The U.S. Government has several executive-branch departments: Defense (meaning the military), Homeland Security (meaning Transportation Security and the FBI and a few other alphabet agencies), Interior (meaning parks, museums, and farms), Education (related to federal grants and school standards), Justice (meaning the court system), State (meaning diplomatic relations with other countries), Labor (meaning the enforcement of labor protection laws), Health and Human Services (Medicare and Social Security), Treasury (oversight of banks and other financial institutions)... I might have left out a few, but you get the idea.
Within each of these departments, people are categorized according to whether their jobs are considered essential or non-essential to the operation of the nation. I know what you are thinking... why do we have non-essential employees? But in this case, the term means that if something gets delayed, how many people are hurt by it and how badly are they hurt? A non-essential job is one that handles things that are safer to defer; an essential job means we can't allow a deferral. So the military and some departments HAVE to operate - but other departments that answer government questions and respond to request for information might not be so important during a shutdown.
With the government shut-down, non-essential employees are in that 800,000 number. The essential employees are either being paid from an emergency fund or they are getting I.O.U.s issued by the government.
This DOES NOT INCLUDE contractor companies who supply labor to those departments. Whereas a federal employee can get an I.O.U., a federal contractor cannot. So the contractors are on unpaid furlough.
I just heard from a friend of mine (and former co-worker with the Navy) today that he and his wife are moving away from New Orleans because his job with the Navy as a contractor was de-funded by the shutdown and after 3 months, another (better) offer came around that he couldn't pass up. He said that there is a lot of that going around, and that MANY people are fleeing the insanity. The problem, of course, is that when this sort of flight occurs, the government departments will look to the contractors to re-fill those labor positions - and a sufficiently skilled labor pool will not be there.
Col, the issue is that Trump, despite what you think of him, is actually trying to fulfill as many of his campaign promises as he can. If the electorate voted for him, he wants to keep those promises as a sign of good faith. But the reason folks speak so badly about Mr. Trump is that he is a political outsider who has no problem at all in shaking up the way the USA has done business.
The reason the Democrats, led by Ms. Pelosi and a few others, want to stop him is because he is dismantling their support structure. The people wanted an end to the back-room political deals because "business as usual" was killing the country with special interest groups sucking as much as they could out of the liberal Congress. I do not deny that the conservatives ALSO want to suck as much as THEY can out of the conservative side of things. And the problem is that there is only so much to go around for ALL of those suckers.
As to "SOB" and it's variants? To be honest, I have not heard a woman called an SOB, but I have heard them via the B word in isolation. I don't think what you reported is as wide-spread as you might think. However, you seem to be interested in learning just how "son of a bitch" is derogatory. Well, I'll take a shot at that. You have probably heard of people referred to as a "dirty dog" - a reference to calling a person an animal. Right? Well the SON of a bitch is a second-generation dirty dog. I.e. not only are you a dog, but your mother was, too!
And it is also the origin of one of my favorite epithets: When you get home to your kennel tonight, I hope your mother bites you!