Apparently, if we call a spade a spade, that act alone will convince members of the Spade Appreciation Society that we hate both spades and their users. However ridiculous the idea is, the fact that some people see factual statements about a tool that way tells us that bias can create delusions.
My read of the back and forth isn't that there's an issue with calling a spade a spade, it's an issue with calling a spade a spoon, and pretending that you're not. If we take Sal's latest laundry list:
Surface Noise
Pop & clicks
Wow and flutter
Mono'd bass
Inner groove distortion
Managed high frequencies
Surface noise certainly exists but to varying degrees and is highly dependent on plating and pressing quality. It's typically not an issue for anything but classical, and in my jazz collection I'd estimate the tape noise from the source well exceeds the vinyl surface noise in at least two-thirds of the albums.
Pops and clicks suck. I'd guess nearly half of my albums don't exhibit any audible ones, and most of the rest maybe a handful per side max. The worst I have of late are expensive audiophile releases (UHQR), while the best recent ones I have are reasonably priced (in context) Tone Poets. If one looks at the waveform or spectrum they'll see hundreds of masked clicks per side.
It's also worth noting that the intrusiveness of these disturbances has a lot to do with the capability of the phono stage: its recovery time from clipping, or that it has sufficient headroom to not clip in the first place. This is something a lot of phono stages still get wrong.
Wow and flutter, except in very rare cases, just isn't an issue unless someone has perfect pitch. It exists, but is sufficiently below audible thresholds for nearly everyone. There are certainly some bad cuts and a good number of incompetent turntables, but I think we should at least assume a competent 'table is being used.
Most bass is mono, and if you're listening to music from the vinyl era it almost certainly is regardless of medium. I can comfortably say that this has been something that I've noticed or thought about exactly zero times when listening to vinyl vs. digital versions. The biggest issue would be out-of-phase bass, but I hope I don't have to explain why you'll likely never run across that.
IGD is something I've very, very rarely experienced, but I use ML/MR styli, and on the rare occasion I do use an elliptical, it's a hyper elliptical that is fresh. Anecdotally I've seen two patterns - people in their 20's mostly using something less than an ML/MR, or people who have shown evidence of not being able to adequately setup a cartridge.
"Managed" high frequencies were more of an issue prior to heated cutting styli and advanced shapes for reproduction styli. It can be an interesting thing to navigate as there are mentions in AES papers that some cutting electronics boosted HD towards the inner grooves to compensate, though that's something I've never noticed from just listening, and as those were the days of conicals it'd seem to not have run very long in to the stereo era at all.
In the age of ellipitcals and heated cutting styli, the reproduction stylus became the limitation, and that's mitigated to a large degree with ML/MR shapes. I know rolloff can be there as I've measured it, but if not doing an AB it's rarely to a level with an ML/MR that'd I'd notice it. Most of the time I can readily pick out level changes of slightly less than a dB in the mid range with no comparison. Most lathes electronics will start to rolloff around 15kHz, but if you analyze music you'll notice there's very little up there, and the vast majority of people the typical age here wouldn't be able to hear it anyway.
All these issues and defects are real, and all else being equal I'd certainly rather listen to a digital version, but they're not nearly as egregious as they're made out to be here. Well, maybe if your experience is abused records, cheap, worn-out styli, and a cheap console stacker. That's what my experience was as a kid, but it's nowhere near what my reality is today. I'd also not recommend anyone get in to vinyl unless for very specific, eyes-wide-open, reasons.
I think my experiences are typical of most "hi-fi" vinyl listeners, at least a lot of the ones I've talked to that have demonstrated some competence with the equipment, or that can phone a friend. And I think this is why many take issue with the simplified lists of six reasons vinyl is horrible and why no one who cares about true fidelity should ever listen to it, and all the condescension that accompanies that delivery.
If you two so badly need to be the arbiters of the truth, then perhaps start dealing with the entire truth, or at least stop feigning abstruseness when people who understand this aspect of the hobby far better than you do challenge your myopic views.