Ah, cholesterol plaques in arteries are in fact the ghost of inflammation past, and specifically macrophage-mediated inflammation. In medicine this is far from a departure from the prevailing hypothesis -- it is a consolidation of multiple lines of evidence.
Yeah, whenever we declare all out war on something, it's pretty much a guarantee of future recantations.
A lot of it seems to run along the lines of confusing correlation with causation.
It's an interesting term that seems to mean something when in reality we understand little about the mechanism and effects. But good to keep researching it, i suppose.