Yeah, and dollars were directly tied to ounces of gold... AGAIN, I am not saying he wants to change the protocol, you implied that.

Lightning is a coupon system derived from UTXOs but they are not the same thing. It is also not a semantic difference either. It is fundamentally different because lightning bitcoin is created and destroyed with each channel open and close. It is also bound to the revocation rules applied to channel states. So, not some irrelevant difference.