I've been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to "voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism" and "the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic" and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they're replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling -- in retrospect I'm pretty sure I could've built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that's what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) -- and the only reason I'm not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
Look. A lot of people are sick of what looks an awful lot like bullshit. We've seen what liberal politics gets us. We see that the victories of the past were won in spite of liberal moderates, rather than with their cooperation. If you find more people taking hard line stances, maybe it is self defense against being dragged into mealy mouthed excuses about why we have to vote for leaders who support genocides.
We've seen what liberal politics gets us:
Fighting to Slow and Reverse the Effects of Climate Change
Free Libraries
Free or Cheap Public Transit
Free Schooling
Free Daycare
Free Medical Care
Paid Sick Leave
Paid Maternal Leave
Border Policies That Accept Good People and More Effectively Removes The Bad
Protections for Human Rights
Separation of Church and State
Right to Love Whoever You Want to Love
Reluctance to Enter Foreign Wars
Better Economies
Lower Deficits
Free Care for Chronic Mental Illnesses
But sure, BoTh sIdES baD, Vi JinPeeng the Pooh can save us! RusSiA iS wInnING thE WAr aGaInST wHiTE SuPReMaCIsT aNtI-cHrIStianS
Are you kidding? Almost none of these points are true. We have almost none of these points besides libraries which are constantly being refunded, and schools that are all but useless.
We are doing nothing more than a token effort to fight the climate collapse, no such thing as free daycare, there is not free medical care, paid maternal leave is laughably short, and so on.
We have every single thing on this list in at least some places in the USA to the point that it would be a much longer list to show every policy and example.
And you're right, it's all under attack. By Conservatives.