There are a lot of interfaces in the existing library that one could consider quite abstract as well. Reader? Writer? error? Another thing worth noting is that many/most C++ codebases manage to avoid the type of generic proliferation you're talking about.
Java is actually a much better example of where generics are used rarely and well. Containers are parameterised by exactly one thing - the type of what they contain. You don't parameterise them with different allocation strategies or comparators. Type inference means generics are often automatic, but still catch mistakes for you. And whilst nothing stops people making bad abstractions in any language, the standard library sets a pretty good example by and large.
That said, Kotlin's generics are better still and probably the best implementation I know of.
The main reasons template errors suck so much in C++ are 1) lack of a proper mechanism to constrain instantiations (hopefully addressed by Concepts) and 2) The general mess that is function overloading and automatic type conversions.
For example, the classic "template hell" error message people usually encounter when starting to use C++ is failing to properly overload operator<< (example here[1]). That error message could easily be as simple as "No `operator<<` for class C", but instead the compiler needs to inform the user of every possible overload match, every possible type conversions that could cause a match, and templates that could have matched but can't be instantiated along with a reason for the failure. Of course it doesn't help that std::ostream is absurdly abstract, but it's really just making a bad problem worse rather than the fundamental root of the problem
The reason STL errors are so convoluted is because the C++ template language is Turing complete.
With C++14 onwards, it is a matter of developers actually making use of static_assert, constexpr if and enable_if.
Not as comfortable as just using concepts, but they get the job done.
Which are needed and/or allowed for reuse because the template language is Turing complete. More restrictive type-level languages have better error messages because the compiler either understands what you're intending to do or you're limited in the things you can express, full stop.