The left doesn’t have principles, they have narratives. They only stand up for principles when it serves their narrative. This isn’t a new phenomenon either. The left’s primary narrative is that there are some scary powerful people maliciously oppressing victims.
The same war was perpetuated by Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. We somehow remember it as Nixon’s war and the anti-war movement only was as powerful as it was under Nixon.
Obama and Bush have the same policies in regards to war. More wars started by Obama, more people died with Obama … the anti-war movement didn’t exist with Obama.
War is evil when the bad guys are in power. War is exploitive when done by someone on the right. When done by someone on the left … the narrative disappears and they are able to ignore/forgive murder.
Almost every issue has the same script. The major figures for global warming alarmism in the US fly in private jets and are absolutely horrible violators of the cause they are advocating for. The left ignores it because worrying about these people doesn’t serve their narrative.
Regulation, economics, human rights, guns, foreign policy … almost every political issue on the left is aligned around the victim/predator narrative. In rich countries with little to worry about, mix this with something akin to survivors guilt and they turn on themselves. Rich white women are blaming themselves for the problems that exist to a historically microscopic degree.
These people often become incredibly attached to their narratives because they have acted on them. If modern feminism is based on contrived false victim/predator narratives … they did some really fucked up shit to men and said some horrible things. If their narratives aren’t based in reality and they acted in support of their perceived victim … in reality, they are the predator.
Of course, the right has their own narratives. Those narratives that make them lose all principles are usually tied to people outside of the perceived tribe. They constantly fear invasion from neighboring tribes and overblow every minor tragedy into a narrative of foreign invasion. This explains their insane loss of perspective on issues like immigration, war, terrorism, etc.
It is easy to link these ideologies to natural psychological dispositions of men and women. If you believe in evolutionary psychology (as I do), the mentality makes sense. People are projecting their evolutionary fears onto politics.