How do I remove this buggy attack surface from that workflow and why should I have to?

"How do I remove" - I dunno, because I don't care to remove it. Somebody's probably done it. Search on Google? It's open source, so look at the code, submit a patch, fork if you gotta?

"Buggy attack surface" - I am unaware of attacks that target journald; can you point me to a practicable PoC attack?

"Why should I have to" - because other people are building your distros, expending their effort on open source projects, and as part of doing that they made decisions on your behalf. Feel free to not use those distros for ones that make decisions you prefer; the choice is yours.

Then you are commenting on the wrong post. This post is about the systems that do not use systemd. Justifying your own use by demanding examples of failure is... odd here.

So when systemd comes up it's cool for people who Don't Even Own A systemd to go on endlessly about how it's terrible and An Conspiracy, but it's not cool for people to discuss that it might not be the Snidely Whiplash evildoers thing by evil people when the shoe's on the other foot?

Weird flex, but okay.