I think the “defeatist” attitude you’re seeing is what happens when about two decades of making the best, most salient, most thorough argument doesn’t lead to the results we want. There isn’t any more argument to make, really. They’ve ALL been made, as clearly as possible, for 15 years. Parts of it are so thoroughly consumed and metabolized by an entertainment media more than happy to cover this on our behalf that they became memes, as you said. “Where are the originals” is such a knee-jerk question at this point it still comes up, in 2019 press junkets. It’s usually the first thing inserted into the 2nd or 3rd paragraph on any story about ANY rumored or reported on new release of the original trilogy.
It’s not a question of having all the arrows in our quiver, or having bigger and better ones that we haven’t thought of yet. It’s not a question of ammo at all, really, or of our being able to “convince” the giant corporation of their responsibility to making salable catalog product we want to buy. We’ve made our case, and had our case amplified and further made for us. There’s basically nothing else to do but wait for them to change their minds. It’s completely out of our hands, and we have no control over them or their decision making process. That’s not defeatism. That’s acceptance. They know who we are, they know what we want, they know how many of us there are, they understand the arguments. Abrams isn’t the only person in the industry with a copy of Despecialized. Odds are pretty good it was someone at Lucasfilm who gave them to him. But there’s no argument, no hidden magic bullet just waiting to be discovered and fired that’s going to make Disney do what we want.
The only thing we actually seem to have any control over is how to make for ourselves the thing that we want in the meantime. And this community has taken that control and turned out amazing work that is appreciated by a lot of people. Will Disney finally decide to do the thing we’ve wanted them to do at some point? Maybe. But there really isn’t anything more this community can do to make it more clear that we’d like them to do that, to make a case stronger than the one they already have before them that they’re deciding to ignore.
It’s out of our hands.