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.
It feels like ducktape on top of ducktape...