MOST STRANGEST THING WITH ADOBE AUDITION 23

The Pre- and Post- fader issue doesn't affect the OP's original issue, but is almost certainly what you need to address. If you apply effects Pre-fader then the effects signals you get when you push the fader up and down will alter with the fader level. If you put effects Post-fader, then the effect level will remain the same whatever you do with the fader.

As for the rest of it, it's relatively simple to explain, but it does require you to understand what a hardware mixer does, because that is what the Audition mixer is emulating - actually pretty accurately (when it's working properly...). In a hardware mixer, the level indicators on the channels will represent the level set by the fader. It looks a little confusing in Audition because the meter on the track mimics the one on the mixer panel, so the levels will follow the fader position. I think the idea of this is to save you constantly having to switch to the mixer panel just to make level adjustments.

What Audition doesn't have (and it would solve the OP's issue) is input meters on tracks. These would give a relative indication of the input level. Now, if you increased the gain on a channel - and that's the control that comes first in a real mixer - then the track level would appear to be higher. You can do this in Audition on a clip by clip basis,  but you have to use the Properties panel basic settings - that's the only place where there's an actual clip gain control which can alter the input level on individual clips. There's a shortcut to this from any clip you've highlighted - Shift+G.

But as I said, the level control in the track box is only a mimic of the fader, so that only affects the track output level fed into the Master channel.

The view was that because the Properties gain control alters the waveform visibility on the track, you don't really need an input level meter, and I think that's a reasonable point. On a hardware mixer they are rare - often you just get a couple of LEDs to indicate that there's an adequate signal there - if you are lucky. In Audition you can see pretty clearly what's in your track, so you are already at a considerable advantage from this POV.

So in conclusion: you can't put a gain knob on a track, because they are clip-based, but the access to them is easy with the shortcut - highlight the clip or clips you want to change the gain of and hit Shift+G. Yes, this works with multiple clips across multiple tracks simultaneously - pretty powerful.