Would either of you speculate on the view that Namecoin is being carefully used not to encourage a decentralized naming system, but to prevent one?
No, that sounds ridiculous. Besides, a decentralized naming system already existed before Bitcoin: Tor.
Looking back over Namecoin's history, a common thread seems to be a subtle misdirection of any effort to bring the coin to a wider audience.
Any comment? Or it's just more "bullshit"?
Definitely the latter. I just appreciate that there's any activity in this thread at all. What I've seen over the years is people try to influence development for their own personal gain. Would be nice if there was a more user-friendly ".bit" browser extension to access Namecoin domains. But the thing is Tor already does a pretty good job of being un-censorable.