I have already read your post and the answers to the questions you linked before. While I completely agree that the explanations given do not really answer the questions, I am not quite sure ifwhether I will be able to give an answer that does but. Nonetheless I will give it a try.
LiquidsFluids: Liquids and gases
Indeed liquids and gases behave practically identical on a macrosopic level, they are both continua characterised by viscous damping behaviour and can be approximated (apart from some exotics such as Bingham fluids) as Newtonian fluids. As a consequence the governing macroscopic laws, the conservation of macroscopic propertiesquantities (e.g. mass, momentum and energy), such as the Navier-Stokes equations take the identical form
just the characterstic dimensionless numbers take different orders of magnitude (certain effects dominate over others). This is somewhat puzzling given that on a microscopic level particles of liquids and gases are assumed to interact quite differently: Gases can be assumed to be small separated particles or molecules while liquids are more dense and may involving large highly assymetricasymmetric molecules and interaction mechanisms can be significantly more complex with repulsive and attractive forces. This fact is though taken into account on a macroscopic level by the completely different equations of state of liquids and gasesdifferent equations of state of liquids and gases (required to close the equation system) and the different order of magnitude of the dimensional numbers.
Pressure as a macroscopic variable
As you can see it does not really seem to matter what you consider, a dense liquid or a comparably dilute gas with simplified interactions: In the limit of small Knudsen numbers both behave identically. Similarly simplified gas models such as automata that describe collision rules on a microscopic level can yield the ordered behaviour of a gas. Nonetheless one is unlikely to give a general explanation for properties such as pressure on a microscopic level that is valid for all kinds fluids: The similar properties on macroscopic level emerge from different ordermicroscopic mechanisms that mainly have one thing in common - damping.
On a macroscopic level pressure is nothing more than a force per area. It has to be in balance with the forces around it. Pressure can take several forms that are all a consequence of magnitudea certain force per area: The momentum flux stemming from macroscopic motion is termed dynamic pressure (that's the contribution you mainly feel when you stick the hand out of your car while driving on the dimensional numbershighway),
$$ p_d = \frac{\rho u_i u_i}{2} $$
while the isotropic pressure (in all directions the same) that determines the properties of a fluid (e.g. in the equation of state) is also termed static pressure $p$. Clearly if there is a certain liquid column above a certain point this exerts a force as well, characterised by the hydrostatic pressure $p_h = \rho g h$, that also contributes to the static pressure. The combination of both static and dynamic pressure is often referred to as total pressure or more correctly stagnation pressure because that's the pressure you feel in a stagnation point of the flow (at least if you slow the velocity down to zero isentroptically).
$$ p_s = p + p_d.$$
The hydrostatic pressure has a direct influence on the equation of state. As you can clearly see incompressibility has to be compatible with the equation of state!
At the end of the 19th century Maxwell and Boltzmann almost single-handedly established the field of "kinetic theory of gases". Already before it was known that the world is composed by atoms both tried to describe a gases as a collection of interacting particles. Already very simple analytical models such as the 1/6 model are able to estimate transport quantities in (dilute) gases and probably motivated by thisthese findings in particular Boltzmann tried to describe a dilute gas as a multi-body system interacting in collisions, using newly developed tools such as statistical mechanics.
Assuming that the world is composed of individual particles with their respective velocities one might still find a certain probability that a particle with a certain speed exists in a certain phase space volume: Around a certain point in space $\vec x$ you willmight find a particle within a certain velocity interval $\vec \xi$ with a certain probability $f$.
$$f = \frac{d N}{ d \vec x \, d \vec \xi}$$$$f = \frac{d N}{ d \vec x \, d \vec \xi}.$$
The macroscopic quantities, density, momentum and total energy, emerge as expected values
One can now ask him-/herself: Is there a certain attractor, a certain distribution that a system evolves to? And surprisingly already by considering symmetries anand conservation of moments you can find the Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium distribution $f^{(eq)}$ and prove with the Stosszahl ansatz that a system evolves towards it over time and find a model entropy.
We could now try to express what this distribution does in terms of the macroscopic variables: Mass, momentumhow the system evolves on larger length and energy have to be preserved by collisionstime scales. One way of doing so is the perturbation theory by Chapman-Enskog (something that traditionally stems from celestial mechanics and looks at an orbit that is slightly perturbed, so you decompose the solution $f$ into different contributions $f^{(n)}$ with different orders of magnitude $\epsilon$).
Surprisingly in the limits of dense fluids leads to the Euler equations considering only the first term $f^{(eq)} = f^{(0)}$$f^{(0)} = f^{(eq)}$ and to the full Navier-Stokes equations if you consider the following two terms as well. You can find certain terms for transport coefficients that connect the "microscopic" distribution to properties of the fluid on a macroscopic level like viscosity.
Note:Note: This simplified model is motivated by a dilute model gas and its limiting value ismight be argued to be a dense gas not a liquid. Furthermore the interactions are more simple than in real gases, e.g. vibrational degrees of freedom are not considered.
Pressure as a macroscopic variable
As you can see it does not really seem to matter what you consider, a dense liquid or a comparably dilute gas with simplified interactions: In the limit of small Knudsen numbers both behave identically. Similarly simplified gas models such as automata that describe collision rules on a microscopic level can yield the ordered behaviour of a gas. Nonetheless one is unlikely to give a general explanation for properties such as pressure on a microscopic level that is valid for all kinds fluids: The similar properties on macroscopic level emerge from different microscopic mechanisms.
On a macroscopic level pressure is nothing more than a force per area. It has to be in balance with the forces around it. Pressure can take several forms that are all a consequence of a certain force per area: The momentum flux stemming from macroscopic motion is termed dynamic pressure (that's the contribution you mainly feel when you stick the hand out of your car while driving on the highway),
$$ p_d = \frac{\rho u_i u_i}{2} $$
while the isotropic pressure that determines the properties of a fluid (e.g. in the equation of state) is also termed static pressure $p$. Clearly if there is a certain liquid column above a certain point this exerts a force as well, characterised by the hydrostatic pressure $p_h = \rho g h$, that also contributes to the static pressure. The combination of both static and dynamic pressure is often referred to as total pressure or more correctly stagnation pressure because that's the pressure you feel in a stagnation point of the flow
$$ p_s = p + p_d.$$
The hydrostatic pressure has a direct influence on the equation of state. As you can clearly see incompressibility has to be compatible with the equation of state!
Pressure on a microscopic level in the kinetic theory of gases
As in the post mentioned above the term incompressible always is accompanied by misunderstanding and confusion. I have written a post on incompressible fluids and incompressible flows some time ago if you are interested. Incompressibility is an artificial concept andwhich needs a physical motivation and clearly has to be compatible with the equation of state and the flows itself!
Arguing about pressure in a microscopic context with the kinetic theory of gases and incompressible fluids and hydrostatic pressure are contradictions by themselves.Arguing about pressure in a microscopic context considering the findings of the kinetic theory of gases, incompressible fluids and hydrostatic pressure is a contradiction by itself. An incompressible fluid requires the density $\rho$ to be constant! As you can instantly see that this would require a temperature gradient in order to fulfill the equation of state of an ideal gas if the pressure varies greatly! A gas can of course be assumed incompressible in some limits but not if the weight of the fluid above compresses the gas on the bottom significantly so the density is not approximately homogeneous (You might apply incompressibility to a vehicle moving approximately on a iso-pressuredensity surface but not in the direction perpendicular to it as the pressure will vary greatly!)
where the exponent $m$ is generally estimated to be around $7$. This means that in a liquid assuming incompressibility holds even for very high liquid columns, as a small change in density leads to a huge change in pressure.
Microscopic view: Pressure in liquids
A potential way of thinking of a liquid is thinking of it as a collection of particles that is so dense that you barely can compress them any more (incompressible fluid). As a result external forces will not lead to a compression of the liquid itself but instead will only increase the force and thus the pressure between the densely-packed particles. While already the kinetic theory of gases is a huge simplification (There exist some really complicated concepts that take far-field interactions into account as well!) of the actual physics, this model is even more so, as longer molecules allow for more complicated interactions (think of hydrogen bonds).