I was reading through this thread, mentally weighing different arguments in a kind of distant, academic way. And then it suddenly hit me.
Oh my god. This is me. I'm doing this.
I realized that I had been subconsciously targeting a specific player in my games for purely absurd reasons, like his playstyle didn't conform to mine or he got into long-winded rules debates with me (which he usually won).
I don't know how this thread will end, in tragedy or punctuation marks, but I thought you should know, RD, that whatever else happens, you have helped one fool of a GM see the error of his ways.