Thanks for that detailed response. That all makes sense. It sounds like my best path forward is to continue to work to build legitimate links from legitimate sources, continue to try and contact Google for a reconsideration, and avoid taking any drastic action that might be interpreted as skirting the rules.

Thank you!

On the potential good news side, I got someone from Google engaged in finding out how to perform a reconsideration request, given that the current method is broken. Hopefully this pans out.