The few who do understand believe that they can counteract it by the "big red button"defense: let the whole network mine the cartel's version, while the faithful bitcoiners will throw their bitcons away, create a new premined altcoin that can be mined only with CPUS, and declare it to be "the" true bitcoin.
That's even worse. A group doesn't even have to takeover the network, only the guardian of the button. The benevolent dictator is not a solution to this.
I think the vehement opposition to admitting the issue is because when the dust settles, the solution will be that there is no safe economic model that allows miners to do anything other than mine for bitcoin. The idea that miners will gradually switch to fees to continue making money to pay for their investment will be the undoing since the alternative is for all the miners to become obsolete once all coins are mined or all clients to be able to collect fees.