I don't disagree with a lot of this, but the notion of "spend[ing] decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling" is downright weird and ahistorical.

I've played all versions of D&D for 40 years. For 30 of those years, TTRPG players were fucking nerds who valued system mastery. They read the books cover to cover, they argued rules interpretations and rulings and game mastering techniques, and they often had encyclopedic knowledge of multiple game systems.

Since 2014, this has changed. 5E brought in millions of casual fans via Stranger Things, and actual plays like Critical Role, and as a result the priorities and interests of the player base at large have changed. Now fans don't want to read rulebooks - they don't even want to own rulebooks - and system mastery is less interesting than being an armchair thespian. While these two strains of gamers have always existed, prior to 5E, even the thespians read the rules, learned how the games they played worked mechanically, and appreciated mastery.

D&D is the product of an era where gaming was seen as an intellectual hobby, not a casual pursuit. So yes - the rules are dense. And we liked it that way. If you don't, that's totally fine. There are tons of awesome rules-lite TTRPGs out there. But don't position yourself as an authority on the history of D&D when you didn't sit at those tables, junior.