This all started with you just saying oh just all of society is made up so we can all just make it up into something different if enough people agree.

Yes. That is literally what society is. That “if enough people agree” is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting, but yes, that is exactly right, if that condition can be met.

This is demonstrably false, history is replete with examples of small groups of people either manipulating or overtly forcing others to act in certain ways, often for very long periods of time, and/or with extreme violence, deprivation and suffering, where the opinion of the common person has almost 0 sway on the course of history.

Usually, it lasts at best until that small group of people dies, and then the whole thing changes. Sometimes them dying has little bits of assistance from the common people, Democracies are more stable, in general, because people have something to believe in that can span multiple generations.

Actually, I would say tyranny of small groups is the more normal state of human history, and democracies are more unusual and fragile modern beasts. They last a while, with the right maintenance, but they can be surprisingly delicate in some ways, and they’re difficult to put together again once they’re lost.

You are full of empty headed optimism, bite sized high school history lessons, where everyone just makes decisions for no apparent reason, you discuss no motivations or material conditions or other factors that influence why things happen, why people decide, singly, as a small group, as a nation, whatever, to make certain choices, just, sometimes people do different things you do not expect.

Yeah, probably. I did give some specific examples, like the late-1800s labor movement and the My Lai massacre. I alluded to the fall of East Germany, with the military being ordered to fire on protestors and refusing.

I didn’t mean to sound like I was saying it was easy to change these agreements people all have with each other that make it all operate, or anything like that. It sounds to me like thinking I was saying that is what got you so upset, and you’re now claiming that I’m changing my story. But my point wasn’t that it’s easy. My point was that it’s possible. That’s why I kept bringing up specific examples like the labor movement or the New Deal, where the whole fabric of society changed from one thing to another with sustained action over time. It’s happened. You can’t say it’s “empty headed optimism” if it has literally already happened, many, many times over the course of history.

Police procedures are not set in stone. They can change depending on who’s in government. Governmental structures are not fixed. Sometimes the whole thing comes crashing down, and people set up a new thing. Sometimes what comes after is better, and sometimes it’s much much worse.