Blaming the accident on MCAS is as much incorrect, as blaming it upon the elevator or stabiliser.. All of which operated normally.
Uhhh- " HAL" ( MCAS) kept on repeating itself since the AOA number never changed. HAL was designed to correct- override the pilot who had been trained that to disconnect hal , first method was to push/pull on yoke and he/she gets full control. But newborn HAL ignored such a disconnect- and simply paused for a few seconds.
Or do you really believe that any pilot would continue to trim to an extreme nose down position as shown by recovered jackscrews ?