I mean its certainly possible that in some tiny fraction of cases I might say "man I could fix this a lot easier if I had the merge commit" its just in the 10,000's of examples that form my experience I haven't stepped on that particularly landmine yet.
Even with that said, my development philosophy compels me to choose "Simplicity over Completeness" and is utilitarian to the core. I will chose whatever is most effective in the vast majority of cases.
Some folks look at "Source Control History" as some pristine, historical record of how things went down. Since I am not an accountant or auditor this has little value to me. It encumbers the day to day to optimize for a case that is almost certain to never happen. A first-order approximation of the history that optimizes for the day-to-day needs of an organization is far more suitable in almost every case.
I use the term "local team pedant" its not a bad thing. Some folks just have a need for things to be "complete" and feel compelled to do so for irrational(usually expensive) reasons. In my own experience the person that is the "no rebase/ never fast forward" cheerleader can never give a solid objective answer as to what the benefit is. Its usually always something like what this no-ff-er suggests(http://walkingthestack.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-you-should-u...) . Things like "I can see whats on a branch, etc." That in itself is not a justification. Its just words. If you could someone how demonstrate how this reduces development costs or offers a better way to organize work and is simultaneously better than the more idiomatic alternatives then I'm all for it.