Pants-of-dog wrote:What rhetoric?
Can you give an example of a progressive doing whatever vague thing you are discussing?
Sure. This example will of course be centered in the US, but you can see equivalent stuff in other countries.
The idea that a right-wing administration will impose a dictatorship, or take your rights away, ban abortion or end welfare is the counterpart to the idea that a left-wing administration will impose a different kind of dictatorship, take your guns and other property away, hike taxes to confiscatory levels, force you to abort fetuses or nationalize all healthcare.
I think we can agree that in reality both actually share quite a few ideas and policies when it comes to governing, and that neither will do any of that.