I seem to have a major misunderstanding about SegWit. I thought the witness data was going to be stored off the blockchain. So it appears that my "legacy" node is storing short blocks if the witness data is being stripped out. If this is true, then it would appear to kill the whole pont of implementing SegWit, and deprive me of the advantages in using SegWit for its many other features.
This is how opt-in soft forks work, and it's part of the beauty of the forward compatibility that Satoshi built into Bitcoin. Basically, legacy nodes are able to process future versions of themselves, even if they don't full understand them, and they are still fully enforcing the consensus rules. The consensus is still intact if the witness data is segregated and transmitted in parallel to legacy blocks. The FUD that big blockers are spreading about "Segwit getting rid of signatures" is just that -- FUD.
So what will happen if I refuse to accept 2Mb blocks, and stay with a legacy node?
You, along with many of us, will help to create a network split in November when the Segwit2x fork occurs. We will remain on the original network. It's difficult to say what miners will do at that time, so it's difficult to say how disruptive the event might be. It might be damn near impossible to get transactions confirmed if most miners really do leave our chain.
I'm on this forum, reddit, and bitcoin slack but do not see any instructions on how to reject the 2X if running a full node.