Someone fixed that. My emacs came with good modal editing out of the box. Maybe your emacs is broken. Try spacemacs.org.

(runs)

And if you don't want to deal with hellish complexity, and have a DIY mindset, you can grab evil, and build the modal system you want.

(dodges)

Modal? I want composable.

With evil-mode, which is what spacemacs is based on, you get it.

Interesting. Does it have text objects?

Yes. It includes most of the standard vim text objects, as well as providing an api for you to write your own. It also has the usual motions, plus an api to add your own. There are existing extensions for the more common vim plugin-provided motions as well.

While I don't know if it has programmable text objects, it does have the standard Vim ones from what I've seen last time I tried it.

Just checked the docs: Not only does it include text objects, you can write your own, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with some elisp.

Spacemacs is a whole bunch of things, nobody needs it for a simple (evil-mode +1) (not that I call it useless, but Vi emulation is part of base Emacs).