I've explained. Now have a real think.
No you haven't. You have repeatedly dodged and I actually have thought about it.
That is the problem.
Your claim does not match reality.
Without a pull the link CANNOT hold itself together.
Again, if you want to claim it can't be a pull you need to explain how the link holds itself together; how the right side of the link transfers force to the left side to move it to the right.
The only way it can do so is via a pulling force.
Again, appealing to smaller links will not help at all, as they have the same problem. You would need to explain how these smaller links transfer the force across them.
The simple fact is you have no explanation at all for how that force is transferred. All you have done is appeal to smaller links which have the exact same problem.
How can there be a pull?
How in the hell can there be a pulling force in reality?
Everything that happens requires compressive force, meaning it absolutely requires a push when you actually look at it much deeper.
That is circular reasoning.
You are claiming that everything needs to be a push, and only justifying it via a claim that everything needs to be a push.
What is your actual basis for claiming everything must be push?
What you want to do is focus on the fundamental forces which actually hold things together.
For what we are discussing, the primary forces are electrostatic interactions between atoms/molecules.
The reason they remain in a particular distance away from one another is due to a combination of attractive (pulling) and repulsive (pushing) forces.
The simplest way to understand is that the charges (i.e. protons and electrons) generate electric fields. These fields then attract opposite charges, pulling them together, and repel opposite charges, pushing them apart.
If there were only pulling forces, everything would collapse to a single point.
If there were only pushing forces, everything would be a gas.
Take a spring.
You compress that spring
You are aware that you can pull the spring as well?
Take a spring, pull the spring to decompress it, then release it and watch it pull itself back to its original shape.
Meanwhile, try it with something with no tensile strength, like a fine powder. Pull it apart and watch that it doesn't pull itself back together.
That is especially relevant to what you are trying to compare it to.
You don't grab one end of the link and push it towards the other end. You are grabbing one end of the link and PULLING it away from the other.
The link is not compressing during this time, nor was it extra compressed before hand.
Instead it is beings stretched, and the tensile (i.e. pulling) forces inside it try to combat that and pull the link along.