It's a matter of practicality. JavaScript can do some really cool things, but if it makes the code harder to read/follow/maintain, it's not very useful. From what I've seen, a lot of the JavaScript techniques that have gained popularity over that last couple years make code less grokkable for a project newcomer.
My goal is to write code that anyone can understand. I get much more enjoyment out of that than writing JavaScript "the JavaScript way."
FWIW, I'm with you on wanting to write readable, usable code. But my Python code does take advantage of functional aspects and meta programming at time, because I can write far fewer lines of code, which means fewer bugs and less time spent mentally parsing code later.
It's not that I don't take advantage of JavaScript's strengths. I get the sense that people interpreted my article as a glorification of the Google Style Guide, that it should be followed precisely. I suppose I should have worded it better. My personal style is heavily inspired by Google's, but I freely deviate where I feel it is practical. For instance, I use closures and functional approaches when I feel it will make for faster/more readable code. It's mainly the annotations and and line limit that I follow religiously.
The obvious benefit is that knowledge can then be applied to any other project using the language idiomatically, and not as if it were 30 years old. Conversely, code to the third party style guide, and struggle to understand the many things that don't adhere to it.
If the author writes his javascript as if it were C++, its really no wonder he hates the language. Javascript is a wonderful little language - but its not C, and if you pretend it is, you're going to have a miserable time.