That: middle managers famously add billions of fields to the bug pages - sounds strange. Jira should reflect a software dev process in your organization, it just helps you to follow it. The process is defined by a doc which can be changed, but not on a whim of any middle manager.

Your description implies that your process is broken, but if your process is broken no Jira can help you. I doubt than even God can help you…

Exactly, and many places have broken processes that are revealed by Jira. Before the dam holding back process stupidity was "the system can't do it", but Jira can do it.

Unfortunately once process stupidity sets in it usually metastasizes and there's no cure.