I think you’ve completely written off human limits to produce and maintain correct code, while being technically correct.
People swear when they have to extract a symbol from an expression because that pollutes a scope and reduces readability (see “assembly” as an extreme example of it). You can’t expect them to be cool with a ladder of queries to do simplest things. They choose languages for comfort much more than for technical yadda yadda. SQL is only comfortable in comparison to other '80s tech.
I learned SQL in the late 00s. I like SQL. It's not Stockholm Syndrome either, I don't think. SQL isn't stylish, and it isn't beautiful, but it's pretty clear in spite of that. More than that, SQL is a lingua franca for databases, and it's very powerful -- this is a pretty difficult thing to beat, and the only thing that I've seen that can do it is LINQ, which isn't a language so much as an API for constructing query ASTs.
Human language and reasoning ability also runs into the problem that certain ideas really do take a whole book to convey whereas others fit into fifty words (like this post). We just don't notice the limitation on our expressiveness for the same reason fish don't notice they live in water.
People swear when they have to extract a symbol from an expression because that pollutes a scope and reduces readability (see “assembly” as an extreme example of it). You can’t expect them to be cool with a ladder of queries to do simplest things. They choose languages for comfort much more than for technical yadda yadda. SQL is only comfortable in comparison to other '80s tech.