Many did believe it, and many still do. I'm sure there were some cynical subversives who deliberately pushed a soft sell to get their foot in the door and push further, but the sad truth is there are a lot of people who are just perpetually addicted to grievance and base their entire identity on their activism.
Progressivism needs to always be making 'progress', sitting still is bad and horrible and ignorant and conservative. It's a political ideology of never being happy and always needing to push change, and of making problems where there are none. Plus a lot of them are complete NPCs who slavishly worship the overton window and only acknowledge Current Thing. I'm convinced most of the people pushing for this shit now would have been shocked by it back in the 90s.
I say they didn't believe it because none of them ever understood their own beliefs or actions. Cognitive dissonance is probably the most common plague among the Progressive types, so they can simultaneously think they believed in those things and then continue to act in a completely opposite manner.
The same way they truly crow loudly about "I can't tell you how to live your life" and "bodily autonomy" and then turned around to scream about masks and vaxxes. They probably believed they believed those original statements, and probably still think they do.
But they don't. They've just convinced themselves they do to spare themselves thinking about their actions and dealing with the pain introspection would bring.
There are people who truly believed 'What we do in our bedrooms is none of your business', but those people weren't necessarily progressives - just people who had an opinion on an issue. Because your characterization of progressives is correct. The ideology requires hypocrisy, mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance to even function. We're fully in agreement about that part.
Many did believe it, and many still do. I'm sure there were some cynical subversives who deliberately pushed a soft sell to get their foot in the door and push further, but the sad truth is there are a lot of people who are just perpetually addicted to grievance and base their entire identity on their activism.
Progressivism needs to always be making 'progress', sitting still is bad and horrible and ignorant and conservative. It's a political ideology of never being happy and always needing to push change, and of making problems where there are none. Plus a lot of them are complete NPCs who slavishly worship the overton window and only acknowledge Current Thing. I'm convinced most of the people pushing for this shit now would have been shocked by it back in the 90s.
I say they didn't believe it because none of them ever understood their own beliefs or actions. Cognitive dissonance is probably the most common plague among the Progressive types, so they can simultaneously think they believed in those things and then continue to act in a completely opposite manner.
The same way they truly crow loudly about "I can't tell you how to live your life" and "bodily autonomy" and then turned around to scream about masks and vaxxes. They probably believed they believed those original statements, and probably still think they do.
But they don't. They've just convinced themselves they do to spare themselves thinking about their actions and dealing with the pain introspection would bring.
There are people who truly believed 'What we do in our bedrooms is none of your business', but those people weren't necessarily progressives - just people who had an opinion on an issue. Because your characterization of progressives is correct. The ideology requires hypocrisy, mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance to even function. We're fully in agreement about that part.