I'm confident CSS is a black box that nobody actually knows how to use

!important. !important everywhere.

I usually use z-index: 9001, because it's over 9000.

I'm sorry, but there is nothing i can't fix in CSS. It's just a matter of experience (ergo a pain in the arse for years).

Our front end dev fixes everything with z-index and !important. Oh, and you know, overwriting framework classes or restyling a tag site-wide just to get it to look right on this one page. On a bad day he just goes for the * rule! I used to just have to fix the backend...