That’s true. And history is nothing but accretions. Sometimes it can become necessary to knock off a few, but it’s simply not possible (or desirable) to go back to some imaginary “pre-accretion” time.
The Roman rite was actually already receiving the care that it needed. There were a few parts which, over the centuries and mostly as the result of monastic practice, had gotten out of their proper order or were somewhat unclear. And it was good to try to focus people on the Mass when they were there. I remember when so many people were busy praying the Rosary during Mass that, between the beads hitting the backs of the pews and the background hissing of lots of old ladies saying the prayers, you could barely hear the priest even in the spoken parts. “Active participation” was simply intended to mean that laypeople should stop doing their private devotions during Mass and focus on the event; it didn’t mean they should be clapping, dancing in the aisles, or distributing Communion...
I actually didn’t even have any objection to the introduction of the vernacular for parts of the mass. When I was a kid in New York, we did something called a “dialogue mass,” which was basically just where the people made the responses of the altar boy and most (although not all) of the mass parts were spoken out loud by the priest. This was done in both Latin and English. The English was simply a correct translation of the (very beautiful) Latin original of the Old Mass. All this was before the Vatican II.