Ebikes are still in a very expansive stage. They may well dominate sales out of sheer novelty value for awhile. This may not reflect a lasting condition.

Ebikes may well take over a segment or two of the bike sales.
Ebikes for various kinds of utility cycling seems like a natural thing.

Apart from that, I can’t see what this animosity is all about.

Weather permitting, I also do tour skating.
Traditionally, tour skaters used ONE heavy pole with a stepped-diameter point that was used to test ice thickness. It was near enough useless for anything else.
Then people who were primarily skiers took to the ice, bringing their poles with them.
It brought some advantages. People could steady themselves on rough sections, there were more muscle groups to engage. To put it simply, poles allowed less able skaters to do more.
And guess what, it triggered the same discussion as we’re seeing here.
”A real skater doesn’t use poles”.
”It’s not skating if it’s with poles”
etc etc,
I’ll leave you to draw the parallels.

It took a couple of years for the artificially cultivated ”us and them” to die down, but eventually all but the most stubborn realized there was more that brought us together than set us apart.

Unless you’re in a registered race, who cares what the others are riding?

How, sure.
Any vehicle, any tool can be used either well or poorly.
And what - in terms of road worthiness - that too.
I’ve been less than impressed by what seems to be a correlation between crude DIY conversions and an extreme willingness to disable the front brake.

But the mere existence of a power-assist feature - meh.