My go to example for stuff like this is the Labour Party in the UK. For hundreds upon hundreds of years it was a two party country, between the Whigs and the Tories, later the Liberals and Conservatives.

At the turn of the 20th century the working class and trade union movement created their own party, the Labour Party. At the time I’m sure many people said it would be impossible to challenge the existing duopoly, that it was a waste of time to even try, etc etc.

By 1929 they were the largest party in the House of Commons. In 1945 they won the majority. It wasn’t an overnight victory. But a lot of people put in a lot of hard work because they believed a better future was possible and their effort paid off.

...do you imagine a nice, orderly, milquetoast system of voting on suitably agreeable topics only has existed for all of human history?

"History and politics" is very much the domain of people trying to do the impossible - to rewrite society as they will it. It would take a lot of either ignorance or disingenuity to claim that this has never gone well.

> "Defeatism" is yet another shibboleth for people who refuse to accept reality.

Sometimes you'd be right, as some people use this as a shield to do whatever naive thing they want, and build sand castles. But I don't think this is the case here. Society needs some level of potentially useless effort, otherwise the things that are barealy possible are never attempted because they are so close to the line.

There's also plenty of causes for which people can mobilize themselves, we don't all need to jump on the ones that are highly likely to succeed.

You don't understand. They're calling the manager. Everything can be solved by calling the manager.

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