It can obviously be simultaneously true that people don't find themselves needing generics in practice, but still want them in the language. Also, there's nothing "inane" about that.
Again from an outside perspective, it also seems that these camps talk about their viewpoints to outsiders more than to each other.
Personally, I always thought the reality is probably closer to "Not adding generics prematurely is a design feature, and it hasn't moved forward yet since the core team doesn't need it enough, and no proposal developed critical mass of community support to consider it appropriately vetted."
We're not talking about wanting the new iPhone or a Tesla here, it's about wanting something that simplifies code / improves the expressiveness of a language.