the left essentially has no principles beyond "opposition" of what they perceive to be the right

Not wrong, but then you realise that the right is almost identical in this sense, and you realise why politics are spinning out of control - it's like a propeller not anchored to a base anymore, so it just flies off and destroys itself. The propeller base is reality, and both sides abandoned it, and are just arbitrarily spiting each other, driving each other farther and farther away from reality and farther into insanity.