Why so committed to Holy Communion in the hand?

I have a simple theory about why the Church today is so committed to the laity taking Holy Communion in the hand -- so committed that although HC on the tongue is, as a norm, the proper way, and in the hand, the dispensation, it is quite difficult to find accommodation in your normal Novus Ordo parish -- especially now in the Covid age. 

Why?

Why so rigid an adherence to an alien practice? 

What is so important to our contemporaries about this way of receiving, when up until recently, relatively speaking, on the tongue was the only way (very primitive practice notwithstanding)? 

Well, I was observing priests concelebrating and noticing that they held the Host until the main celebrant communicated, at which time the others too consumed theirs. Of course, I have seen this thousands of times. But suddenly it struck me that the versus populum (towards the people) posture of the priest makes his consumption of the Host visible to the congregation, and concelebration (also a Novus Ordo innovation) prolongs and emphasizes the gesture.

In a flash I saw -- and perhaps others have written about this, but it's a real revelation to me -- that in the Vatican II ecclesiology, the priest is not meant to be as separate and set apart as in the old. He is dislodged from his hierarchic role. As the years from the Council rolled on, the lines became blurred, intentionally. Many observers have commented on this trend. James Hitchcock put it well here:

Lay and clerical roles have been redefined in a way which almost seems like a simple reversal: lay people press forward eagerly to discharge formal liturgical tasks previously reserved to clerics, while priests and religious aggressively crowd into what were previously considered lay professions, even (as in the case of certain nuns in politics) renouncing their religious status in order to do so. Devout lay people seem to say that they cannot fully live their faith unless they perform recognizably priestly tasks, even as priests complain of being confined in the sanctuary. It may occur to the disinterested observer that such reversals betoken not so much deeper understanding or creative redefinition as simple confusion and formless discontent.

Well, after years of watching priests self-communicate (and maybe it didn't take too long; these things often don't), the laity, or perhaps I should say certain opportunistic innovators, felt a need to do things just the way the priest does them; in short, to self-communicate rather than to receive the Host on the tongue, kneeling. In fact, one serious sacrilege that I used to observe is Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist (that is, laypeople) going around the altar and taking the Host directly from the paten -- the way a concelebrating priest does. For a long time now I have taken care to stay away from such churches if possible, so I don't know if this abuse is still occurring.

The more I think about it, the more I see a straight line from the priest turning to face the people to the concelebrated Mass to the people (or unwittingly, their agents) insisting on Holy Communion in the hand. Counterfactually, this mode is the preferred and normal one. And yet, it's the result of a distortion of the roles of priest and laity. 

I really urge any reader who does not already receive Holy Communion on the tongue to pray and read about it. I believe that our Holy Communions need to be as reverent as possible.