While I agree I do think there's some "aspiration of purity/correctness" in your approach that I've long let go of.

I look at the royal mess that is HTML/CSS/JS as a necessary evil, required when we want to target browsers. To me it's "just the presentation layer".

In my work I put a lot more emphasis on correctness in the db schema, or business logic in the backend.

When it comes to the messy presentation layer I prefer to write a little as possible, while still ending up with somewhat maintainable code. And for this Tailwind fits the bill really well: LLMs write it very well, new devs understand it quick, and it's quite easy to read-back/adjust the code later.

I 100% agree a Tailwind project is not the best way for a new dev to learn HTML/CSS. But then I prefer the new dev to focus on great db schemas, intuitive APIs, test-able biz logic, etc. Fiddling with the mess that's HTML/CSS is not the place where I consider human attention is best spent on (or where developers pick up skills to become much better developers).