taxonomy auto-path views path issue I have used the taxonomy menu and auto path to create a url alias something like below. The reason is so that the taxonomy menu has the right path.

/my-alias/[term:name]

I then enabled the taxonomy view and modified the view page so that it is like url below.This view grabs the taxonomy term and then filters that term and displays the fields in the view this works fine when I test it in the view itself

/my-alias/%

My question is how do I get drupal 7 to look at the view url first and not send it to the taxonomy alias?
I think your problem lies in the fact that you are using the same URL for both a view and a node - this is a really bad idea in most circumstances.

If you always want the view to show - what does it matter if the taxonomy itself is at /category/tag/[term:name]?

You might find Page Manager useful for what you're trying to do, there's a fantastic free tutorial and familiarisation set of videos that have helped me immensely of late.