Which suggests to me that JS is just amassing Steem ahead of planning a massive powerup to unseat the consensus witnesses, followed by another fork that will effectively centralize Steem.

And would any value be there? I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong since some people prefer centralization over decentralization. I agree, a new chain may be the best way to go. I hinted that a bit in this post from last night, but didn't want to come out in front of a larger announcement.

You make a very important (though delicate) point that some of the challenges we face as a community relate to much larger ideological differences regarding centralized vs. decentralized governance, hierarchy, and control.