And that describes the people involved in general, so why does this make for some process encouraging meglomaniac leaders?
Because the people at the top hold the feelings more strongly, so either their more fanatical about the cause than the other revolutionaries or they're there to gain power for themselves. If they're fanatics they'll not trust those who aren't 'true believers', whereas if they're self motivated the results should be obvious.
And so what? That's a far cry from "we, the pure, and you, unable to carry the torch".
This is not a very good basis to argue that they're going to hold on to power at all costs just because.
Well the simple fact is that the costs of holding power in that situation are pretty minimal, so unless the beginnings of a second revolution start it's easy for them to hold on to power. They could probably do it without really realising what they're doing, feeling that the situation still isn't stable enough for elections or something.
I don't think anyone, certainly not me, is arguing it can't happen - but if and where it does, it will be because of reasons more specific than "typical revolutionary" generalizations that sound like something (coincidentally, I hope) straight out of archreactionary hostility.
I am no reactionary, I simply believe that the revolution is the best way to shoot progress in the foot. Either the revolution fails and hurts all progressive efforts, the revolutionaries take power and turn into dictators who shove reforms through in a half thought out unstable manner that in the long run damages progressive efforts, or the revolutionaries take power and implement slight reforms that could have happened a little bit slower withouth the revolution and the cost of a lot less blood. In very few situations would I support a revolution starting. Once one has begun that the last option I mentioned is the best of the three, but gradual reform is still the best option.
No, because otherwise we actually look at a given situation and see why it happened. Generalizing about revolutions requires treating where they happen as if it was all basically the same, which it very much wasn't.
Very true, the revolutions are all very individual affairs, however the fact that we're talking about hypothetical revolutions 50+ years after the POD in societies that did not exist OTL with people that did not exist OTL what's important is the fact that across the vast varieties of revolutions things have almost always turned out badly, especially when there's hostile counter revolutionary countries around.
Why is everyone talking about revolutions? Couldn't a war really fuck things up in europe too?
A war will have a winner, or a stalemate, or something like that. The winner gets the colonies, at least enough of them to violate the OP. Or in a stalemate the British get the colonies.