Maybe there will be a consensus but I just don't see it happening (maybe you have some insight that I don't?). Since there is a economic incentive to get larger block and there is no consensus for the status quo the market will simply get what it wants regardless of your definition of what bitcoin should be. I don't think the market can betrayed bitcoin as it is a tool for the free market. Nothing less, nothing more. Only people standing on its way would feel betrayed at this point.
it seems you take some majoritarian view. there may be some merit to that, however, i don't understand how one can oppose a 51% attack on a technical level and also support a 51% attack on a political level. either we value consensus, or we don't.
there is economic incentive to achieve larger blocks, yes. that's why it will likely eventually happen. but miner incentives, like price discovery, do not play out overnight. scaling cannot be an overnight process.
i am not re-defining bitcoin. bitcoin already is. in order to hard fork the protocol, a
new consensus must be achieved. you can't write off the blockchain that miners are currently mining, lol.
if consensus goes from 95-100% --> 75% or 51%, indeed, many will feel betrayed, and we will have a civil war on our hands. those who assume that a simple majority can force the rest of the market into a contentious hard fork put far too much faith into their linear understanding of miner incentives, and are obviously not versed in game theory.
in such a situation, we
will have multiple blockchains. whatever view you take on the block size debate, it is of utmost importance that we prevent such a situation. in that case, it's possible that bitcoin will never again comprise a "single" blockchain. security on all chains will be crippled, as will trust in bitcoin.