Why am I a Command Line Cave Dweller?

Several weeks ago, I encountered this question on Quora: Do Linux fans actually believe that command line is more user-friendly and intuitive than GUI?. The answer has been percolating in my head ever since then, and I expected to quote it here as an explanation for why I am a "Command Line Cave Dweller". But now that I have finally answered the question myself, I see that I didn't answer the question I wanted to answer for this post (or maybe it does, but it's just too wordy and rambly).

So, what is it about the Command Line that makes it so attractive to permanently move into and make my home? Enough so, that I have not just permanently moved into this space, but have become a patriotic citizen?

Certainly, my childhood experiences almost certainly played a role: I was cut my teeth on BASIC (both on Atari and on a beast of a computer my Father brought home from his work at Sperry Univac, with its 8-inch floppy disks), and when PCs became popular, I lived and breathed MS DOS, and thought Windows 3.1 was clunky and cheesy. But I also can't help but think that, even then, I would have abandoned the Command Line if it wasn't a pleasant experience -- after all, while I have fond memories of the various incarnations of BASIC I have used, I nonetheless cannot help but observe that using BASIC (including "QuickBASIC", which is probably my most favorite incarnation of the language), particularly after having learned better computer languages, is a painful experience.

The answer is multi-faceted, but perhaps the biggest attraction is its simplicity. At its most fundamental level, I give it characters by typing on the keyboard, and the Command Line processes those characters, and spits back answers based on them -- and if I wanted to add ways for the Command Line to process characters, regardless of computer language, all I had to do was learn how to "pull in" characters, which I could then process them in whatever way I desired, and then "push" the results "back out" to the world.

Beyond that, I think that most people underestimate the power of text-based protocols and display systems. Tmux and Gnu Screen gives us windows and panes; escape codes enable pop ups and buttons and pseudo-graphics ... and because all of this is made up of text, it can all be selected and pasted elsewhere!

Perhaps my greatest gripe against the Command Line is, ironically enough, that I cannot use it to display images. It's my understanding that it's possible, and there are even terminals dedicated to providing that functionality, but I haven't yet figured out how to do it.