All of your arguments are pretty valid, but still it DOES NOT excuse Bonin for keeping the damn joystick pointing the nose UP for MINUTES on end. At some point

All of your arguments are pretty valid, but still it DOES NOT excuse Bonin for keeping the damn joystick pointing the nose UP for MINUTES on end. At some point in time you must reflect upon what you are doing. If my hypothetical car needed to do a turn right, and I keep pointing the steering wheel left for many minutes and still do not realize that what I am doing is antithetical to what I want to happen, the blame is on me. I place the blame for this accident 75% on the crew, and 25% on the stupid design decisions made by Airbus. Averaging control inputs is an inexcusable design decision, and not mechanically linking the controls is the cherry on top. If those 2 design decicions weren't made, hundreds of lives wouldn't have been lost that day, even with the amazing level of incompetence shown by Bonin et all. And every Airbus flying nowadays still have this fatal flaw.