I agree, it feels like it was a reaction (no pun intended) for the CSS-in-JSS trend which started in React and complicated with Webpack pipelines. In my mind, Tailwind is just "Bootstrap for CSS-in-JSS."
Honestly, as much as I disliked the CSS-in-JSS trend, it did solve a reasonable problem with React — one which Vue and others had solved with their SPC.
Exactly. Tailwind and CSS-in-JS are both a reaction to the limitations of React JSX and how poorly it treats HTML and CSS.
If Vue/Svelte had gotten the popularity React has you would see a lot more people realizing that SFCs and scoped style blocks solve most of the problems people poorly solved with CSS-in-JS.
Tailwind has some other benefits to it like good token setup and ability to copy paste from project to project and have it just work, but the mess it makes of your templates and the difficulty of then editing it down the line doesn't make those benefits worth it.
Honestly, as much as I disliked the CSS-in-JSS trend, it did solve a reasonable problem with React — one which Vue and others had solved with their SPC.
It feels like ducktape on top of ducktape...