It hasn't been the case for some time now. JS started as something to spice up the html content, to add extra niceties. But The rise of virtual Dom JS rendering Frameworks brought upon pages that don't have any html content, that don't display anything without JS, Just a Blanc page. For some time adopters of such Frameworks would keep a limited functionality noscript page, but it didn't take long for them to drop the extra work. The highest profile website following this theme is Twitter, the dropped noscript a year ago. So JS is not optional anymore, to browse the full web you need JS, without it you get a subset that doesn't include some major social networks or some major news sites.
Ever since JS was added to Netscape Navigator, it's been the case that you need it to experience the full web. The difference is that now you need JS to experience more than a small fraction of the web.
This is already the case, isn't it? You can easily disable js for good, and then enable it as needed on a per-site basis.