I agree with you in principle, but I have a couple quibbles with your argument. Firstly, there is, in fact, a branch of theoretical physics that derives particle masses from first principles:
Heim Theory (I'm not sure why the article is so short now; I remember it being much more extensive, with discussions of predicted vs. observed masses for most of the basic particles) apparently derived the basic particle masses from fundamental constants. But hardly anybody is working on it now, because it's pretty far out there (among other things, it implies that FTL travel is possible using
really big magnets). So there are approaches that would calculate the masses of nuclei, but they're weird and nobody's really sure if they're legit or just hokum. Not for nothing, it also predicts dark matter (but then again, also paranormal phenomena).
Given that the terribly-named
Amplituhedron, recently discovered, reduces Feynman calculations that used to require supercomputers to some geometric manipulations you can do on a napkin, I wouldn't be surprised if some fundamental theoretical breakthroughs are going to come out in the next few years.