Yet a payment network is all that
some have wanted Bitcoin to be... I don't begrudge that, but the weirdness of the goal doesn't relieve it from having to have a logically consistent roadmap, or permit it to take down the whole currency in its failure.
There is nothing in the post you linked to that suggests Gavin wanted Bitcoin to purely be a payment network. He was simply talking honestly about how he personally was planning to use Bitcoin back in 2010.
Is this part of Core's new
"Communication Strategy"?