> which of the dozens of times it's gotten in my way on a new image
What was one recent example?
> an already-secure environment
Not possible.
> has the fundamental incompatibility between SELinux's design and traditional Unix permissions and tools been suddenly corrected
You mean labels? No, that's pretty fundamental to SELinux.
> Has tooling been created to allow us mere mortal sysadmins and engineers to understand and manipulate the byzantine SELinux configuration?
Try setroubleshoot.