The reality, every blockchain is vulnerable to such forking. The system is still decentralized, as the miners have to make their choice. However, the Ethereum Foundation decided to force the fork upon geth users, as the software defaults to pro-fork. So in effect a lot of users will be coerced into forking, without knowing.

This particular fork is political and not technical. The previous ETH forks were modifications to the protocol. The current fork is a modification to the account balances. The rich Ethereum fanatics are completely and absurdly delusional in thinking this will be a great event in their history. To me, the canonical chain is all but dead. The protocol will survive, just not on this chain.