Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I don't believe that's true. All my understanding is that systemd does too much, not that we shouldn't have an init doing more than SysV. Event-based and dependency-based init systems are not controversial. Having an init system with inseparable and breaking changes to logging, IPC, etc. with its own DHCP client seem to be what people think is absurd.
Literally everything you wrote here is objectively wrong about systemd though. systemd is a package of separable utilities, plus an init system. Much like the GNU core utilities. The complaints about "doing too much" can never decide what too much means and usually start suggesting obvious, raw sore spots of SysV init are actually features.
> systemd is a package of separable utilities
It is absolutely anything but that.
If I want to use GNU coreutils with my own implementation of cat, I can write my own. I have to comply to the interface of GNU coreutils' cat, of course, but as long as I do that, I'm fine.
Good luck replacing journald with your own implementation. The API isn't stable or well-documented, so there is no interface that you'd have to comply with to speak of, and even implementing your own journal reader is officially discouraged.
I often find myself thinking that systemd (which I actually use on my desktop) would be far less hated if the development team would stop claiming things that aren't true. If I break a monolithic program into four parts that can't work without each other and can't be replaced, I'm only meeting a cargo cult definition of modularity.