A currency that if you knew what you were doin', you could incommode your traceability.
There's the distinction.
If you know what you are doing you can make a good effort to hide your traces, but even then it might not be enough for blockchain analysis companies.
Mass surveillance isn't about stopping terrorism or catching criminals, and indeed, there is no good evidence that mass surveillance has ever been the thing which thwarted a terrorist plot. Mass surveillance is about control of the population. If >99% of people don't mix or coinjoin or otherwise try to maintain their privacy, and of the 1% who do the majority do it poorly or incompletely or slip up or make a mistake, etc., then that's good enough for the government. Just as mass surveillance can't track everyone who uses Tails and Tor and PGP and disposable email address and so on, but that's OK because it can track the vast majority of people.
If Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge, etc., all came out in unison and said they would all implement mandatory Tor routing which you couldn't turn off, you can guarantee the government would start screaming about terrorism and "won't someone think of the children!" For the same reason, they would never accept global use of XMR.
Whoever vilifies that Monero is linked to crime or admits that the governments would never accept its widespread usage should also consider to stop using Tor as it invades the governments' business and makes harder for them to trace us. They should also propone http and believe that https is for those who have something to hide.
There is a difference between me using Monero and the government accepting everyone in the country using Monero.