Who cares about pitchforks? I think you fundamentally understand the weapons with which this war will be fought and what the sides are - Bitcoin won't flourish outside of America because America won't be acting alone. The KYC laws are similar in many countries for the exact same reason Bitcoin's regulations will be similar everywhere. Watch the legal fluff accumulate, watch the barriers to entry rise, watch the laws be applied to the Bitcoin Foundation's members and used to influence who gets control of the reference client. This is a war of ideals, information(fought against an enemy that records our every email, every call and every forum post no less) and sustained effort - as soon as you stop correcting the lies people start believing them.
If the truth is inconvenient you just need to repeat a story long enough to get people to believe it - have you seen Fox News?
If you think continued existence is okay - Bitcoin will be a corpse on life support so people can say "it exists".
Just because there will always be something called "Bitcoin", doesn't mean they can't kill the revolution separately.
There are so many people that haven't heard of Bitcoin or that barely understand it that it or frankly care about the money and not the ideals(and if the money stays and the ideals go, they won't give a fuck) that you could pervert it into something unrecognisable, still call it "Bitcoin" and still satisfy enough people that any complainers will be dealt with like conspiracy theorists.
The people involved in Bitcoin for the ideals are but a rounding error of the overall user base, especially since as it spreads people will pick it up because it is money, not because it once stood for something.
All we do is plug it based on the value, how much it has gone up, how much it is going to go up... so we've attracted people who care about the value and that's it. We created an army of people who only want to succeed as individuals and are more than happy to do it at the expense of everyone else on their side. They may as well be the other side.
Last years userbase will be next years fundamentalists, you'll be like the Christians who don't eat fish on Fridays except you'll spend Friday harking back to when the limit was 21 million Bitcoin...
you make some good points and I too have been under the impression that the system is just waiting for the right moment to let their true presence be known. but I'm not so sure about the rest of the world following in Americas footsteps when it comes to regulating. in the last 2 days, we've seen the US impose tighter sanctions against Russia, and now France, Germany, Italy, and 6 other EU countries have said they won't participate. then there's the new BRICS bank being established.