Did I misunderstand or was that whole rant just to establish that, actually, we do need super tiny frameworks for the front end, but they're super tiny so it's not a big deal and they're not bad like React?

We don't need things taking control from us. Or dictating the terms for manipulating an already defined interface.

If that means you have to make a small thing that is designed to do just the task at hand but to do it well, I am all for it.

I think the only frameworks that I have encountered that I felt were worth using were server side things like express where they had a very specific task to do and could isolate areas of behaviour.