[AJ007]

I wonder if conservative/progressive and right/left were false dichotomies. At the extremes there are remarkably similar outcomes. Corruption is present at the extremes and the more moderate center. Some of the corruption is more explicit and illegal (pay me and I'll do this), other less so and legal (you did this while in office so now we hire you for big $ to do little.)

[int_19h]

They are not false dichotomies, they're just not the only ones that matter. There's a separate scale of liberal/authoritarian that, while not entirely orthogonal to progressive/conservative, allows for a lot of leeway in practice.