Perhaps you should consider a different perspective. (By the way, I’m not advocating a particular position. I am simply pointing out some thinks you may not have considered).

“It is the job of the patent examiner to find the art not the applicant…. The anti-patent movement is constantly trying to shift the burden to the applicant.”

Yes, but the relevant question is how to handle poor examination which will inevitably occur some of the time. Given the inevitability of examination failures, one must consider who is in the best position to avoid the issuance of invalid patents and who has the most incentive to avoid the issuance of invalid patents. Thus, while an applicant has no obligation to find the best prior art, as between the public and the applicant, the consequences of failure should arguably fall on the applicant. I assume you disagree, but this is a policy dispute–not a legal one.

“The patents that are being invalidated with 103 at the PTAB, in general, should not be invalidated.”

How would we quantify this beyond the assertion “in general”? While I have no doubt that you believe this, I think you presume too much by dismissing those that do not accept this as true. There will always be disagreement about whether any particular claims should have been invalidated. This disagreement may be grounded in different interpretations of 103 or different opinions of the relevant facts in a particular case. Simply dismissing those that disagree with you as being anti-patent is not persuasive.

“The examiner may just pick the closest ones and not bother with cumulative references. All art in the field should be assumed to have been considered as the examiner could not go through all the art and is merely picking the closest.”

Why should we make this assumption? There are other possibilities. The examiner may also have picked the simplest art–not necessarily the closest, may have missed something, or may have simply done a poor job. We don’t know. The issue that you seem to be glossing over is how to deal with this uncertainty. The use of an assumption is one of many possibilities. The consequences of a particular assumption are of profound significance, and are not self-evident.

“This is easy to understand when you know that there are thousands and thousands possible art references for almost all patents and when you understand what experts in fields do.”

Rather than support your assumption, this undercuts it. The greater the volume of potential prior art, the greater the likelihood that something was missed. Absent some indication in the file history, there is no way to know whether a given prior art reference was considered and dismissed as cumulative or not considered at all.

“The anti-patent movement has all sorts of propaganda stories they run to try to obfuscate this.” While your conclusion may be correct, unsupported assumptions are not a rebuttal.