Squash-merge is entirely fine for small PRs. Cleaning up the commits in advance (probably to just squash them to one or two anyway) is extra work, and anything that discourages people from pushing often (to get the code off their local machine) needs to be well-justified. Just review the (smallish!) total outcome of all the commits and squash after review. A few well-placed messages on the commit, attached to relevant lines, are more helpful and less work than cleaning up the commit history of a smallish PR.

For really large PRs, I’m more inclined to agree with you, but those should probably have their own small-PR-and-squash-merge flow that naturally cleans up their git history, anyway.

I categorically disagree that squash-merge is “stupid” but agree there are many ways to skin this cat.