Dear Alan,
1. Many thanks for this: "I agree with you that true local realism is at the heart of physics." For it's on this foundation that I hope we (with others) might build a productive collaboration.
2. My thanks too for this: "And the mathematical structure of quantum entanglement is incompatible with local realism." But here I'm more cautious: my little qualifier "true" is missing, and I suspect we might presently differ re the nature of entanglement and its definition [see my essay]. However, given the quality of your own work, I very much look forward to discussing this -- confident that agreement is likely.
3. As for quantum computing: and the mainstream one-day starting to question the foundations of quantum mechanics? In that Bell's "theorem" didn't lead more to water, I doubt much else will lead them through a change of religion to a refreshing drink!
4. And you certainly got this right: "You might be interested in reading my essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics". I look forward to discussing prevalence waves, wavepackets, and physical waves where -- bypassing probability and all its confusions [eg, see Qbism] -- I have here used my preferred term. Thus I seek to understand objective prevalence waves [say, simple cos2] via a theory of prevalence amplitudes and wavepackets.
5. As for GR, I am still in the basement, cleaning up the more elementary foundations. But (at the risk of being misunderstood), I am bold enough to suggest that we can together strengthen your position, as follows:
5a. You say: "something close to classical physics should be restored, reunifying physics that was split in the early 20th century."
5b. I'm inclined to say, respecting its outstanding history: classical physics itself should be restored. Thus, for me:
(i) Planck's quantum of action is classical. For, as EPR made clear, [from ¶3.1) in my essay], (iii) "The elements of physical reality ... must be found by an appeal to the results of experiments and measurements [the latter, in our terms, often better described as tests]."
(ii) Bohr's "disturbance insight" is classical. As per EPR above: Malus (c1810) taught us that classical light-beams are disturbed by interactions.
(iii) And so on: special relativity is classical; and from my essay, what I call Malus' Law, Bayes' Law, Born's Law are classical; in short, true local realism is wholly classical.
(iv) What more might our opponents require of classical mechanics and its modern developments?
PS: Though I cautiously use scare-quotes -- [I call it "neo-classical" -- hoping those who think about such matters will see my stubborn code for classical -- your work [almost; it's early days] inclines me to join you under the neoclassical banner. Certainly it's food for thought.
6. You say: "QM should not be a general theory of nature, but rather a mechanism for creating discrete soliton-like wavepackets from otherwise classical continuous fields. These same quantum wavepackets have a characteristic frequency and wavelength that define local time and space, enabling GR without invoking an abstract curved spacetime."
I say: please see Fröhner; LINK via #17 in my References. The R-F theorem there says that periodic angular distributions entail discrete angular-momentum distributions, hence discrete outcomes of spin tests: the classical rules for linear and angular momentum holding, not just on average but case by case (as in EPRB). See also the spinor wavefunction in his eqn (69).
PS: Hoping this helps, I'll post it on your essay-site too.
With my thanks again; Gordon