This is exactly it. I looked at doing something like this, ok, I looked at doing this and decided early to forgo CSS because it's so very very complicated.
Truthfully, if my skillset had better matched the task I might have been lured into giving it a go. On another project I considered using CSS as a styling technology and got down to really understand it in detail. I then realized how good my 1,000 yard vision really is.
I can't speak to the forces which inevitably lead to decay but essentially, for some reason every technology tries to eat the world.
CSS is trying to eat the world and HTML5 is trying to eat the world and of course Javascript is famously trying to eat the world.
All these technologies (and here's the part where I see my post begin to fade to gray) are on their way to experiencing technology's version of societal collapse.
I use that analogy because it's so so apropo.
They are overwrought, overly complex systems yielding only marginally better results and being maintained at huge cost in terms of attention, brain power and collateral damage by everyone. The benefits accrue to a smaller and smaller number of people (FANG et. al) who do not have society's best interest at heart at all and are very far from the founding principals which inspired the original vision.
A simple scriptless HTML 1.0 browser minus the blink tag would deliver at least to me nearly 100% of the benefit I get from the web which can be characterized as "seeing what is happening, seeing what other people think, learning new stuff and downloading stuff".
I would love to start a (reactionary) movement away from the current web composed of a privacy-preserving HTML 1.0 browser capable of HTTPS and people dedicated to creating pages and resources for it. I don't know of any such "movement" .
If anyone is aware of anything like this do share.