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And if I want to replace one of those 40 independent executables with my own, I just do so, right?

Yes you can certainly do that if you want to.

The documentation clearly describes their input and output, so that they truly ARE independent?

There is extensive documentation and further to that the code is available and open source. Another good way to get involved is write the docs. Documentation is very often lacking in virtually all open source projects.

They are a big mass with interdependent states.

What do you mean? There is no shared state and the fact that they are separate programs is part of what creates that separation of state dependence. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here so can you provide an example of systemd executables that illustrates what you mean?

And there are no discernible pros to binary logs.

As the OP noted, you can simply use text mode if you prefer.

If you really dont like it then thats fine, that is the beauty of free software in that anybody can fork a project and do what they like. It just seems very suspicious when people get abusive toward others that are exercising that freedom, you were certainly free to fork the pre-systemd version and free to try to present a coherent argument to others to support your fork rather than the systemd fork. The problem is the systemd proponents went in one direction and rather that doing something and going in a different direction the systemd detractors followed the proponents and continued complaining and hurling abuse at them. A small group went off and developed devuan so this really should be a non-issue but the detractors still seem to be angrily following the systemd proponents like a bunch of hypnotized sheep rather than supporting the devuan folks (or various other non-systemd distributions).

The problem is that Microsoft didn't _want_ that, hence "Secure Boot"

That is complete bullshit, I know the microsoft hate train is popular here but come on, even the fucking Surface, their own product that they build has SecureBoot on it doesn't prevent you from turning it off and installing Linux, ive got Ubuntu running on one right now!

Microsoft's control of the signature process

They dont control the signature process, any manufacturer of any UEFI hardware can put any signature they want into the hardware they build. Or they can include no secureboot at all or they can have controls (like pretty much every single one does) to turn secureboot off or have a mechanism to enrol new secureboot keys.

...the slow "evaporation" of the requirement for Microsoft certified machines to even _offer_ an option to disable "Secure Boot."

That is entirely at the discretion of the hardware manufacturer, why should Microsoft have to force them do to it? The biggest problem with secureboot is that it is becoming another excuse for poor linux marketshare, just blame it on secureboot. The reality is that commercial ecosystems for desktop/laptop based on Linux that include hardware vendors are already happening such as Chromebooks and Steam Machines and there is of course Dell's ongoing effort to support pre-installed Linux on the Inspiron line as well as the XPS and Precision workstation models.

So instead of spreading FUD and trying to undermine the effort to make Linux more viable and palatable to end users how about contributing to that development instead? Even if you can't write code or contribute money to the effort there is plenty of work that needs doing in documentation.

Maybe not clone, but if you act quickly enough, you might be able to get him to a place where he can meet someone to reproduce with.