I feel a lot of Tailwind's popularity is from people who were not around when inline style attributes were common place.

And I feel a lot of Tailwind’s flak comes from people who never used it.

Having used inline styles in the past, there is no comparison to tailwind. Tailwind is a good and productive, though certainly not ideal tool. But it’s miles ahead of whatever else has been produced by css frameworks, in terms of productivity and maintainability.