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?
The "left" or "progressive" wing is a small part of the people who help them campaign, vote in the primaries, and donate large amounts to them. I assume they think they'd turn off more people/support than they would gain by catering to the left. The DNC establishment (and the money behind them) are the opposition to the left (but they at least share some values, such as bodily autonomy and some domestic human rights, unlike the GOP).
Small enough to ignore when it comes to policy, but big enough to blame for losing elections.
It sounds a lot like the rhetoric of the right, black/brown/immigrants/Jews/etc. They are weak but also a significant threat. It's just inverted. The left/progressives don't have enough votes to listen to, but they need to fall in line.