For context, the OP compared certain leftists cheering on an attempted assassination with soldiers at war returning fire at you. These things are not comparable at all. I can agree with your goal without having to agree with your tactics, but nowhere did I ever say that we should "just do nothing."
My point was if you refuse to negotiate over or adapt to not having things work 100% your ideal way, then in the real world you're choosing to forfeit entirely. And choosing to forfeit but complain loudly about it is just choosing to get nothing with extra steps.
Also, you misrepresented OP slightly, he compared it to enemy forces initiating fire at you, not returning fire. Neither instance is defensive.
You're right, OP's example didn't specify the Chinese returning fire. I'll give you that.
My point was if you refuse to negotiate over or adapt to not having things work 100% your ideal way, then in the real world you're choosing to forfeit entirely
I just don't really understand how this is your take away from my conversation with OP. In what way am I refusing to negotiate? To the contrary, I am advocating for people to put more nuance into their thinking. Not everyone is a war combatant just because they voted a certain way. It's a bit ridiculous to act as if everyone is either friend or foe in some massive life-or-death warzone.
OP started by describing how that wartime friend/enemy mindset more accurately describes the extreme lefty behaviour we've seen lately than any kind of disagreement between countrymen. It's not technically a watertight thesis yet, but it's not unreasonable.
And then OP tried to use their wartime experience to explain how that level of commitment to force trumps everything but an equal commitment to force. Violence is the fundamental unit of human negotiation, because once you're physically incapacitated you have no say in what comes next, everything else above that is just obfuscation of that fact by mutual agreement, typically for overall net benefit to all parties.
Once that mutual agreement is broken by one party seeking material gain, then the other party needs to be willing and able to return violence in equal or greater measure so that sitting back down at the negotiating table becomes the materially rational choice. And the more you let them hurt you before you find the will to retaliate, the less able you are of actually forcing them to stop. There will always be people with no natural inclination towards peaceful coexistence unless it materially benefits them, those who most desire a peaceful existence must understand the necessity of demonstrating a communal ability to enact such effective violence that peace becomes a matter of self-interest even for those for whom it's not a matter of principle.
Now really the reluctance to commit violence is more of a spectrum than a binary, so even for the more violence inclined the will needed for the first punch is way more than the next hundred. So if they've already thrown the first punch you'd be a fool trying to negotiate them out of punching you again without providing some form of physical deterrent, and since any single punch can end you, you'd also be a fool to stop and offer them a return punch every time, you rain down retribution without reprieve until they surrender or are incapacitated. On a group level, if anyone cheers one of their own group throwing the first punch at you, then they've also already crossed that emotional Rubicon, so you can likewise consider them unable to be stopped by anything but an equal or greater threat of violence towards their group, waiting for each of them to strike first is begging to be crippled before you can fight back.
For context, the OP compared certain leftists cheering on an attempted assassination with soldiers at war returning fire at you. These things are not comparable at all. I can agree with your goal without having to agree with your tactics, but nowhere did I ever say that we should "just do nothing."
My point was if you refuse to negotiate over or adapt to not having things work 100% your ideal way, then in the real world you're choosing to forfeit entirely. And choosing to forfeit but complain loudly about it is just choosing to get nothing with extra steps.
Also, you misrepresented OP slightly, he compared it to enemy forces initiating fire at you, not returning fire. Neither instance is defensive.
You're right, OP's example didn't specify the Chinese returning fire. I'll give you that.
I just don't really understand how this is your take away from my conversation with OP. In what way am I refusing to negotiate? To the contrary, I am advocating for people to put more nuance into their thinking. Not everyone is a war combatant just because they voted a certain way. It's a bit ridiculous to act as if everyone is either friend or foe in some massive life-or-death warzone.
OP started by describing how that wartime friend/enemy mindset more accurately describes the extreme lefty behaviour we've seen lately than any kind of disagreement between countrymen. It's not technically a watertight thesis yet, but it's not unreasonable.
And then OP tried to use their wartime experience to explain how that level of commitment to force trumps everything but an equal commitment to force. Violence is the fundamental unit of human negotiation, because once you're physically incapacitated you have no say in what comes next, everything else above that is just obfuscation of that fact by mutual agreement, typically for overall net benefit to all parties.
Once that mutual agreement is broken by one party seeking material gain, then the other party needs to be willing and able to return violence in equal or greater measure so that sitting back down at the negotiating table becomes the materially rational choice. And the more you let them hurt you before you find the will to retaliate, the less able you are of actually forcing them to stop. There will always be people with no natural inclination towards peaceful coexistence unless it materially benefits them, those who most desire a peaceful existence must understand the necessity of demonstrating a communal ability to enact such effective violence that peace becomes a matter of self-interest even for those for whom it's not a matter of principle.
Now really the reluctance to commit violence is more of a spectrum than a binary, so even for the more violence inclined the will needed for the first punch is way more than the next hundred. So if they've already thrown the first punch you'd be a fool trying to negotiate them out of punching you again without providing some form of physical deterrent, and since any single punch can end you, you'd also be a fool to stop and offer them a return punch every time, you rain down retribution without reprieve until they surrender or are incapacitated. On a group level, if anyone cheers one of their own group throwing the first punch at you, then they've also already crossed that emotional Rubicon, so you can likewise consider them unable to be stopped by anything but an equal or greater threat of violence towards their group, waiting for each of them to strike first is begging to be crippled before you can fight back.