2x is a shit compromise for everyone except the creators of SegWit, which itself is simply a bad upgrade. It alters far too much, and its promises of "backwards compatibility" fall somewhere between stretching the truth and outright lies. If it's a scaling upgrade, it's unnecessary, as the same can be achieved with bigger blocks without the excess complexity. If it's just a malleability fix, then why does it leave virtually no part of the codebase untouched? People at /r/btc have been saying this about 2x since the day the NYA was signed, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that given the chance for Bitcoin to have onchain scaling without SW, they are going to be more supportive of that option. I agree that a malleability fix is needed, but it can and should be fixed with a hard fork, in a fraction of the lines of code.

The only reason for designing an over-engineered soft fork in favor of a hard fork is if there is an ulterior motive to prevent any and all hardforks - the heavily pushed narratives that hard forks are simply too dangerous to attempt lines up with this. Given that essentially none of Core's arguments against increasing the blocksize can stand on their own merits (hence the need for censorship over at /r/Bitcoin), it is clear that there is an unspoken agenda guiding their decision making process. The Core Devs have abused their position of power by getting involved in politics; it would be in the interest of all stakeholders if the authority they exercise so readily became a thing of the past.

In case it wasn't already obvious, I am in the camp that hopes to see Bitcoin Cash become Bitcoin by becoming the chain with the most cumulative PoW while the legacy chain fades into oblivion. There is no functional difference between BitcoinCash with FlexTrans and BitcoinCore with SegWit, other than a higher throughput for on-chain transactions. All the fancy new tech that Segwit is allegedly "necessary" for require a malleability fix, not SegWit specifically, so we'll still get LN, atomic swaps, and the rest.