The only "desperation" I'm seeing is people like you trying to stifle discussion and debate. You're afraid to allow the market to decide. You don't want to let people to have a choice in case they choose a path you don't approve of. If you want to use an open-source coin where anyone can make alterations to the code and release their own version of the client, you have to accept it when that actually happens. If you can't accept that, there are plenty of closed-source coins out there that you might find more to your liking. Larger blocksizes aren't just "his idea". It's an idea that many people support. All you can do is attack him because you're having trouble attacking the idea. If I were a coder and released another client that supported larger blocks, would you be attacking me as well?
Bitcoin core is not a permanent authority on what Bitcoin is or should be. Neither are its developers. Bitcoin is not a dictatorship and one group of developers doesn't get to make all the decisions forever. If you don't understand that, why are you even here?
The problem as I see it is that the Bitcoin Core software is the reference software. If you want software guaranteed to have no back-doors,spying code or malicious spamming. Where do you find it? You have to trust an implementation and be able to judge other implementations against it. We need to trust that those that know and are experts in their fields, are actively defending against malicious changes and they can't do that across 10,000 different implementations.
Gavin has been there since the start. He has "form", as they say and the respect he has, was earned. That's not to say he could not be convinced into bad ideas, I just think its not his modus operandi to be malevolent and I don't see any factual basis to not continue with this assessment. He seems to feel passionately about bitcoin and argues for things he wants to see. Has he been "subverted" and moved to the dark side? Maybe. But I only see reasoned articles for debate at the moment fro a topic and decision he feels passionately for.
I sometimes feel that people want to piss in the developers' garden that they are tending because they can and there is nothing they can offer. Its a sort of reaction to a feeling of helplessness. There is nothing wrong with criticism and debate as there is nothing wrong with others wanting a different route but there must be a plan and plans by committee are slow laborious processes that don't please everyone.
Others just want to stamp on your plants because they don't like people having nice things
The problem is that most people don't know what the implication of these sorts of issues really are or, perhaps more importantly, what the interests of those in the debate are. What we do know is some people want change and the debate is about how much rather than not at all. So. Bitcoin is a hard concept to see in its entirety and most can only grok small chunks at a time. There are some that can grok everything and for us muggles, we have to listen to their arguments and vote with our confidence in those we trust.
My opinion is, I don't have an opinion on this particular change. I am dead set against centralisation and see many discussions that will ultimately lead us there but this isn't one of them. To me, this discussion is like "how pregnant should we be" and see all proposals as not being efforts to increase the distributed nature of Bitcoin.