What can I say. The founders of our 5th republic had a very different approach to government than your founding fathers did. At the time it seemed appropriate, hell the French at the time really wanted it, after 12 years of political impass after political impass (De Gaulle was brought back and given emergency powers to remedy one). But everything is easier with the benefit of hindsight.
Best part is, a decent portion of the people protesting probably voted for Macron in the runoff.
This is somewhat misleading. Not defending Macron, but moreso standing up for De Gaulle. The 49.3 clause in the French constitution is not an emergency law. It's a tool at the disposal of the executive branch (view it as an executive decree on steroids). But yes it allows the government to basically force a bill through our lower house (literally "shows up to parliament, passes law, refuses to elaborate, leaves") but not the Senate, although unlike the US, the lower house is the "stronger" of the 2, in the case that should the Senate reject a bill, it would go through a bicameral comitee, and after said comitee amends it enough, the lower house will have the final say. And this is the situation we are in now. Macron 49.3d the bill because he knew he didn't have the votes. Now there is some counterweight to this. A vote of no-confidence can be called in the following 24 hours (this would only force the government out, not Macron). One was called, and failed by 9 votes. The swing votes would have been our "centre-right" party. Macron threatened to call a legislative election should the motion pass, and enough of them felt their seats un jeopardy I guess. Is this anti-democratic? Yeah somewhat. But please understand, the 49.3 was created as a reaction to what was parliamentry superpower during the 4th republic. Governments couldn't get anything done and got replaced every 6 months (one might say the founding fathers would enjoy this) when De Gaulle came back in 1958, he was pretty much like "F this", but I don't think he imagined 60 years later, some coward would be using this in bad faith for every single thing, especially deeply unpopular measures. De Gaulle during the 1968 riots had the decency to hold a legislative election (which he won). Macron now is walled up somewhere and has the gull, after circumventing the vote, to say shit like "m-muh legitimacy of representatives". And please, don't compare Louis XVI to Macron. The king got his head chopped off precisely for doing the opposite of what Macron did (held elections to try to resolve a financial impass).
"Gone back" is putting it lightly. Fleeing is more appropriate. Algerian attitude towards the Piedsnoirs was known as "The suitcase or the coffin" post independance.