I feel it's too late to escape the web browser being established as an application distribution platform - though if you're building a document, then you it to your users and your own dignity, to make it like a document, not an application. Most websites are more like documents than apps.
But my comment applies to apps as well - just because you need to write actual software, doesn't mean you should throw away sensible engineering, and produce a bloated, user-hostile, spying & battery-devouring monster. Yet this is what seems to be coming out of most web shops these days.
You don't need JS to "serve a socially useful purpose" most of the time, as well.
As I said, it seems we decided that everything needs to feel like an app.
95%(yes, I'm probably exaggerating) of the actual value of the today's websites could be plain documents with links to each other.
But try and suggest to anyone you're gonna have a company presence site(or anything for that matter) with no JS at all, and see where it gets you.