First of all, many people do believe in what you call strawman da’as torah. Some of them even have jobs in chinuch, but we aren’t going to talk about them; alas, your community does not have a monopoly on stupid people.
The way you describe non strawman da’as torah seems to actually be a modern Orthodox value considering that one of the things that generally defines modern Orthodoxy is the belief in ethics beyond Halacha <sup>1</sup>. (This might be truer for some individuals than others. My earlier posts here, both deleted and not contain many rants on the subject.) If you believe that the ratzon hashem is confined to what you can be convinced a particular set of seforim tells you to do, then there is nothing to gain from trying to discover the ratzon Hashem in whatever you’re doing, whether you call that discovery da’as torah or something else.
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<sup>1</sup> A broader — and probably more accurate — definition of ethics would take Bein Adam Lamakom into account as well.