It is here... but it still is not here. If you get what I mean. Until they have an user friendly GUI for the Lightning network, and simple to use websites and/or mobile applications. It is not really here in my opinion.
You are right, both camps are somewhat bitter. But I find the BCH side more welcoming and friendly.
When those kind of LN apps will release the price of BTC will most likely see an incredible rise. Until then I am not bullish on either Bitcoins. Some of the new alt coins will most likely outperform both of them % wise.
I'm not very bullish about bitcoin either I feel like it's lost it's first movers advantage now as it's so slow and expensive lightning network is a solution that other coins have already solved without having to go off chain. Steemit is already doing over 1million transaction a day at the moment and is nowhere near capacity.
I have seen a lot of market acceptance for Litecoin and I think there will be adoption of "coins" out of the top five marketcap principally. My vps merchant now accepts about a dozen coins but none of them are graphene based coins. Steem may be the rational decision to make, but the market decides more on network effect than anything else.
Steem is even worse to privacy than bitcoin. You do not have to analyse the chain. It is all there on the blockchain. All of our transactions are tied to some identity.
If all of Bitcoin's transactions were put on Steem's we wouldn't even feel it.
Graphene in fact works wonders and I am a big fan of the technology.
For the privacy part.. might want to use services like CashShuffle for Bitcoin Cash or a privacy coin.