Sure, but if the winning fork turns out to be unmaintained or suffer some devastating replay attack, Bitcoin as a whole suffers. It's possible for the consensus

Sure, but if the winning fork turns out to be unmaintained or suffer some devastating replay attack, Bitcoin as a whole suffers. It's possible for the consensus mechanism to be used towards an objectively bad system. And sure, that's part of how the consensus mechanic was always meant to fuction. DAO contracts were meant to be irreversible too, but that didn't stop people from being sad and seeking a change when they were robbed.