I don't think they were being condescending – there's a lot of material out there on why Tailwind is good, it's easy to find via Google, but nothing beats trying it out.
If you don't want to do that then you could watch some of Adam Wathan's screencasts on YouTube where he uses Tailwind to recreate pages or build new ones.
Entirely reasonable of OP to posit bad faith on your part, especially given how you've reacted and the way you constructed a strawman to get upset about.
> I may have contributed hundreds or thousands of dollars of my time to the project
Sure, but that was you deciding to do it, and it's commendable.
This is very different from someone emailing you and telling you to (or expecting that you will) donate thousands of dollars of your time to a project.
I feel so sorry for you people. It's a weird collective psychosis that you're all experiencing. I just hope that your beloved leader doesn't lead you down the road to Jonestown.