How does someone throwing out a particular transactions from their node's mempool for ~10 minutes before that same transaction is mined in block represent "protocol inflation"? What does "protocol inflation" even mean?

Even if I believed "spam" was some kind of existential threat to bitcoin, policy wouldn't be the way to fight it. The way to fight it would be through a consensus change. The only argument I've seen for why they don't push for consensus change is that it wouldn't happen - and yes, it wouldn't happen, because the real stakeholders understand that's a dumb change to make.

Every so often, I try to find an argument for why bitcoin doesn't work or isn't what I think it is. If such an argument exists, I want to know it. Yet every time I've done this, I've only found misunderstandings. But I continue to periodically look for such an argument in case someone has a new argument I haven't considered.

The same thing happens when I look at knots runner arguments: that Core is a unified group of devs that are somehow all compromised and/or that they're trying to sneak in a dangerous change and/or they're all lefties. All I've seen is people that haven't read any communications between core devs, don't understand the difference between policy and consensus, or don't understand the cat-and-mouse game that results if you try to block arbitrary data.

No matter how many times those arguments are refuted, those same people outright deny the truth and continue posting the same bullshit. A refuted point, frequently repeated by many (supposedly authoritative) people, doesn't somehow make that point true.

At the risk of falling foul of Godwin's law, you might as well take the Nazi's "big lie", substitute Jews for Core devs, and you'll find the strategy is exactly the same.