If your job literally entails using a database abstraction and you can't arse yourself into learning said abstraction then it's a skills issue, just as much as people who want to use ORMs without learning SQL.
You definitely make good points, and all my issues are over-comable with time and effort and knowing which tricks to use, so this truly is a matter of opinion and taste. I'm just pointing out that the idea that this produces more readable code seems far from obvious.
I'm back to using bespoke query builders and raw SQL since I don't use Python much anymore, but sometimes miss the syntax and migration system.