My brief experience has been similar. Elm is a dictatorship that could be wonderful if it didn't exist in the realm of messy html/js. I experience an icky feeling of stockholm-syndrome part of the time, and just plain frustration at other times when dealing with Elm.
What's infuriating is that I do see the benefit of some degree of strict stewardship. It's just that it's too much in this case.
The use of "dictatorship" in your comment brought a smile to my face because I thought of the BDFL title given to Python's creator ... and then imagined the Elm team forgot the "B" at the beginning of the acronym. Note that I have no personal experience with Elm and am in no position to take sides. The comment just describes the mental image I got from your comment's ink blot.
Most dictators believe that they are benevolent, as does their close circle (which is then often seen as "the community", because it has the loudest voice). From the blog, it definitely sounds like this is the case for Elm.
I totally agree with this fustration. There seems to be some innate paradox between growing a community and being a BDFL. I think this also expresses is self in our current political environment.
This isn't a programming discussion. It's a discussion of the policies around an open source project. It's totally politics, albeit not on a national scale.
What's infuriating is that I do see the benefit of some degree of strict stewardship. It's just that it's too much in this case.