Whatever your dislike-level to JS is, we cannot dispute the fact that JS, or at least JSON can do pretty much everything HTML can do, but not the other way around.
Of course our beloved HTML can still exist, just as PDF exists. But in my opinion it shouldn't be the required standard. Since I can markup just as easily in JSON And like it or not JS is one the the core web components today, we can make JS the standard (we can keep it safe by allowing defining a safe subset of JS - e.g. JSON - which would work with general scripts disabled), with support for plain ol' HTML.
Point is, JSON can replace HTML, while preserving everything you like about HTML but not vice versa.