Lightning can hop through payment channels, you can pay anyone on the rest of the Network, infinitely, sometimes for free (if someone wants lots of BTC going through their channel)
The clue is in the word "Network", if you can only pay one person again and again, it's not really a Network. Lightning is a network, where you can pay anyone.
Sure you can -- if you can find a route. But if there is anyone on the entire planet that knows how trustless decentralized anonymous routing works, they've not been telling.