> merge pains are reduced by frequently dealing with smaller rebase merges instead of trying to do one massive merge at the end when I'm finished with a longer life task that might last a week or two. The more often you merge the less painful it is.

You can take care of that just by doing frequent regular merges, no need to do rebase ever, and rebase doesn't make this part any easier, does it?

I think the 'cleaning part of history', and trying to avoid those annoying merge commits in the logs, is in fact the only reason to do rebases, no? It's obviously an important one to many people.