I am not "straw manning" progressive liberal politics by conflating it with Marxism. The two biggest ideologies to emerge since the reformation are classical liberalism and Marxism.
When an ideology focuses on individual human rights and freedoms and it views government's primary role to protect the individual rights and freedoms of its citizens, it is grounded in classical liberalism. The US was the first nation that embedded the ideology of classical liberalism in its founding documents. The British made some attempts but failed until later.
When the Declaration of Independence declared that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights by the Creator. It was making a radical statement, that even today many people struggle with. It was an aspirational goal and clearly slaveowners did not agree with it along with many others. Yet through our history the goal has persisted, and most people believe every individual has the same civil and human rights. However, human rights especially the right to pursue happiness has an economic component to it. And while we are making progress towards equalizing civil rights, we are losing ground with respect to individual property rights.
In the early 19th century, Karl Marx and others embraced a totally different ideology. They saw the world through "class". The wealthy controlled everything for their benefit. If the poor were to have any chance at breaking this class structure, they needed to break the hold the wealthy had on government and then install a government that would ensure "equity" through socialism (effectively seizing and redistributing private property... at some level Marxism really does not recognize private property since the state has the right to seize it as its own).
However, for Marxists to achieve their goals, the "oppressed" had to recognize themselves as one group far bigger than the oppressors and harness their power to seize control of government so they could impose their ideas on society.
Nearly all modern beliefs are grounded in either classical liberalism or Marxism. The term Conservative on its own is not defined beyond wanting to preserve the status quo or return to a time past (though without more context that "status quo or past state is not defined).
Progressivism on its own is not defined beyond wanting society to advance to a better state (of course "better" is very subjective).
Modern conservatism is far more defined since it is a political ideology (not a general ideology or ill-defined term). Modern conservatives have a "platform" and that "platform" provides a lot of granular details that one can use to categorize it as either classical liberal or Marxist along with other philosophical belief systems).
Progressive liberalism is also a political ideology that has a platform and like Modern conservatism one can look at the underlying ideologies expressed in that platform.
So, let's look at that platform.
When you look at the progressive liberal language does it talk in terms of individual opportunity and reward or does it focus on a "fairer" way to distribute income and wealth across our society. If it is the latter, it is grounded in Marxism (you view Marxism as a negative "trigger" word, but I am using it as a word that describes a specific set of beliefs).
Progressive liberals are masters at wordsmithing and are very sensitive to the power of words to shape thinking by connotating emotional responses.
Help me understand what "politically correct thinking" means... does society have a right to dictate how people think? Who decides how the group must think to be correct?
How about "cancelling" someone? Should "the group" cancel an individual because the individual does not agree with the group in order to impose conformity and orthodoxy? or should society encourage a diversity of thought and opinions?
How about the term "white privilege"? Do you think all white people are born into "privilege" and all minorities are "victims" (except Asians and Jews who have recently been thrown out of the "victim" identity groups and the progressive liberals have come up with a new term... BIPOC to identify "victims" of the system.
I do agree with your final sentences. You don't need to be a progressive liberal who subscribes to Marxism (even if they may not know it as such due to marvelous wordsmithing of progressive liberal leaders) to be a progressive.
As someone seeing the changing demographics of this nation with its aging population and smaller family sizes, I can advocate our society needs to transition to extended families, where grandparents provide the "equity" for the home and watch the grandchildren, while both parents work to support the income of the family, and children are brought up to embrace their future responsibilities by pursing an education capable of supporting themselves, their future children and their parents in old age.
Such a vision would be progressive in that it departs from our current society which was largely built around each generation being twice as big as the one that preceded it and people "leaving home" and setting up new family units.
My vision of the future embraces a "socialistic" view of the family but preserves a capitalistic view of how the economy should operate and how goods and services get distributed in that economy.
In contrast, the Amish people can be viewed as extremely conservative. But their conservatism is built on a religious form of "Marxism". They take care of one another, shun those that don't conform to their values, are subject to the authoritative directive of their church "elders" and they view the world through group identity.
The terms progressive and conservative are useless without context. Someone who views the world as evolving and someone who views the world as better off conserving says nothing in particular about what they believe instead it refers to a general feeling towards change. Even then the progressive and conservative can agree in some instances like in my example of the extended family, that society needs to go back to the extend family or progress to a new version of the extended family and end up in the about the same place.
