I agree with pretty much everything you said, but in what I hope doesn't derail the thread, I will say even lowly Gold status can be a great thing, outside of laughable chances of upgrades (but I have gotten them!). On my last trip (which had 4 family members with me):

• Prior to the first flight we spent a hair too much time in the Centurion and despite a 50 person line in the boarding lane, we waltzed ahead in priority as they were calling group 6 and were able to get our rollaboards on
• Got extra legroom seats for everyone together on 3 of the 4 flights (although to keep it relevant to this thread, no free booze*! )
• Our connecting flight out of DFW to MTJ was canceled and I raced outside security to Priority ticketing while the fam shuffled over to the customer service desk as a backup. 5 minutes later I had 5 tickets for a flight later that day, all of us in MCE. The normal ticketing line was way too long to even consider it. Canceled flight was a completely full 319, the new flight was an E75 (albeit to GJT), so I knew there would not be much space for reaccommodation.

I'm not saying AA is handing out all sorts of amazing elite amenities, but I'm going to miss not having even the lowest level of AA elite come 2022 (assuming they don't extend it)

*To make it even more relevant, we spent about 5 hours total in the DFW Centurion between our initial connection and waiting several hours for the new flight, so it would have been the one flight I would have turned down a free drink if it was included