I don't mean to question your abilities here, especially since I don't write JS myself, but I don't recognize your view of TypeScript.
> why should not the latest javascript be enough?
The fact that TypeScript exists in the first place and is extremely widely used by large organizations would seem to indicate that the latest javascript is not "enough".
> In the old times javascript was apparently not good enough without jquery - but why add another dependency of similar ilk now that jquery is removed?
Again, I'm not a JS dev, but it seems very dubious to equalize jQuery with TypeScript. They have completely different objectives and achieve completely different things.
> I am averse to complicated javascript franken toolchains because they don’t age well. Better to stay vanilla.
I can understand and appreciate the sentiment, but since most people seem to agree that the lack of static typing in JavaScript is something that can introduce bugs and unexpected behavior, and the user base of TS is quite large (made by MS, used by many large organizations[1]), I would agree with what most users of it probably would say, that the trade-off is by far worth it.
[1]: https://stackshare.io/typescript