erasing /var/lib/dpkg/info/xorg.conf.md5sums as well as /etc/X11/xorg.conf and all backups of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.* just generated the same error output as was happening before when dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg was run. The debian version of X is so far as I can tell very broken. The thing is, I had superuser access at the time I did all of this. The only other thing left to try is real root access from login while the system is off line to do this configuration. If that doesn't work, I have no more ideas.
