The problem is you think anyone to the right of Stalin is a Nazi.

Edit: I'm glad my manic commenting this morning sparked such wonderful debate.

Cassandra... in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.

For those who were also wondering

I'm like this, but I'm just a pessimist. I naturally expect a terrible outcome from everything, and get disappointed every time I'm right.

My roomie got called in on an all-staff meeting on a weekend back in spring. They're truckers, so some work weekends, it's normal. All-staff meetings were not however. No one divulged any information, and so I was all "oh you're all getting laid off." My friend was all "that's impossible, they're actively hiring!"

Day came. Gathering started. Atmosphere was great. My friend sent me a text going all "we're all having a great time, drinking coffee and eating cinnamon buns, talking about work." Half an hour later "so we just all got laid off."

The company was struggling as a whole, so they decided to shut down operations in this region in an attempt to downsize and keep the company afloat long enough to remedy the situation. The management didn't know until right before the meeting, hence why no one knew what the meeting was for.

Everyone who claims to be a centralist is like that. They're not a centralist they're just a ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

There's no sensible debate to be had about whether the climate crisis is happening. The Right don't have anything to offer the conversation because they deliberately refuse to debate sensibly on it.

To quote Vaush: "If the choice is between 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler, you choose 99% Hitler. Full stop."

Why is the both sides mindset becoming so prevalent?

Liberalism is used, cynically (imo), as a cudgel, to vote against real progressive politics. We can't have healthcare-for-all because we have to pick the side that isn't insane or else we get the insane group. And so on, and so on…

Look at how the Biden admin endorses genocide in Gaza. They completely ignore the masses of protesters calling for a ceasefire. How can they get away with this? "The other side is worse."

A truly responsive party would not stick its thumb in the eye of the people. It's not that both sides are equally awful. It's that both are awful and one uses the other to retain power.

Because people are tired of having to choose between shit and poison.

Staying in the middle is a bad idea, the truth is that both sides are bad but one of them is undeniably much worse, though I can’t really blame people shitting on Democrats. As long as they still vote against Republican, obviously.

Let's be more honest. Both sides are horrible.

Yes, one side is "trying to set up detention camps, threatening to kill political rivals, consumed with hate". The other side isn't trying to better people. The vast majority (there are a handful of exceptions) of people in politics are trying to gain power and money for themselves and for their friends.

The biggest difference is that they haven't yet crossed the line into actively trying to destroy our democracy.

That's certainly enough reason to support that side over the other one. But it's not the "good side".

If you are paying attention and you have a drop of empathy then you're almost guaranteed to be one.

I think it's even easier than that. Remember when you left your dirty dishes in the sink yesterday and thought that's a problem for the tomorrow guy (or girl)? That's them, on a global scale, all the time.

Well we can't solve problems. What else are we going to do?

I once talked with an enlightened "pacifistic" centrist.

At some point I used the low hanging fruit - colonialism! do you think both sides were right? I felt kind of silly for not using a more sophisticated argument but- he said "yes, they should've just talked and came to some compromise :)". It didn't matter to him that one side was clearly an aggressor, because since the native people tried defending themselves that was enough for him to think both sides were bad.

clearly that fruit was a bit too high still, so I went with the good old - what about Jews and hitler? he replied that still, they should've tried to come to some sort of compromise- at that point I was very done talking to that guy. How on earth did he see a possible middle ground between "i'd like to live please thanks" and "i want your whole ethnicity eradicated" is beyond me

the lesson is - start with arguments you find simple and straightforward, ones with obvious answers, because some people can and will trip over even the lowest hurdles, and it'll save you a lot of time lol

The majority of people who identify as centrist/libertarian/“on the fence” are purely doing it because they know that saying they’re conservative gets them attacked.

In the US there really is no compromise anymore, nor can there be. If you willingly vote for a facist, racist, sexist party under any circumstances I’m personally not interested in your opinions at all, because you’ve deemed whatever minor policy more important than my, and many others, ability to live safely in this country.

i've never met a ''''''centrist'''''' who disagrees with conservative talking points.

You just described a Leftist, in some ways. Disagreeing with both majority parties doesn't mean you have to stand between "evidence-based" and "far-right".

There is absolutely no contradiction in being for police reform, and against riots lasting for days

That's being in the middle of the two positions. It's not that there's a contradiction, but that you just ate up the rhetoric that BLM protesting was all "riots lasting for days". And "Police Reform" is a middle-of-the-road alternative to "follow the evidence, defund 90% of the police and have non-lethally-armed services do those things". This fits our description of centrist to a tee

There is no contradiction in being for gun rights, while also wanting limits on them

Sure. I'm a leftist who feels this way. The "real center" here, though, would be the Democratic party, who still want less gun control than most civilized nations. Your view perhaps resembles the "the Right is so bat-shit insane that conservatives are confused for moderates"?

There is no contradiction in wanting functional government services and universal healthcare, and thinking that free markets are effective

I mean... yeah there is. If free markets were effective, we should be gutting all government services and regulatory bodies. Nobody actually believes free markets are effective. There are those who embrace the buzz-word without realizing it, and then there are those who want the free markets because they are ineffective and that the profit margins available to them are massive.

There is no contradiction in wanting a more balanced budget, and government services to be funded

Again, this is the formal Democratic position. The formal Republican position is called "Starve the Beast", and it is for there to NEITHER be a balanced budget NOR be government services funded. I'm not making that up. On this view, you sound like a Democrat, but if you vote for Republicans on their economic stances despite matching Democrats, that makes you the middle of the two views again.

The idea that there are only two sides in politics is a strange delusion created by your two party system.

Obviously, but there are two sides to every issue. If we get back to the OP issue, it's that one side has been screaming "climate change is real and permanent damage is imminent" and the other side has been screaming "climate change is fake and God loves us". Centrists have been between the two saying "I know the meteor is headed for us, but my retirement is more important to me than the world still being around when my kids grow up". We've been dealing with 40+ years of that. But yeah, that IS between the two sides.

If you are left wing, and argue for left-wing policies in every case, that means you will also be argued with by somebody who believes political nuance and not just waving a party flag.

The funny thing is that for 9 policies out of 10, most lefties just argue for the educated position against the "gut instinct" or "I know science says this but it worked for me" position. Hell, just look at the topic of parents hitting kids and it covers all the nuances of the leftist problem. Is the Left always correct? No. But the Right and/or Center is a broken clock in this. I think the Left is wrong on Gun Control and the Democrats are right. That's about the only issue I can think of right now that the majority of the Left is wrong on. Not because I'm a leftist but because I'm educated in the issues.

The right wing also shits on centrists because they think they are secretly left-wing since they argue with some of their stupider points as well.

Not quite. They pretend centrists are the far left and shit on them, so that "moderate" really means "neocon but not seeking Handmaid's Tale".

These people are not “secretly right-wing” and just don’t have the balls to say it. That is a horrendous take no matter where you fall on the political spectrum the only serves to limit conversation.

Anyone who voted Trump in 2020 was either ignorant or Right-Wing, regardless of what they claimed to be. He is against fiscal conservativism, against modern medicine, and was caught red-handed working with Russia to steal the 2016 election. His presidency damaged the economy, but also focused that damage on states that net-provide resources for the country as a whole because they are Democrat. A person in New York paying an extra $10,000/yr in taxes with reduced overall QOL and COVID-dead family members "voting Trump anyway" is not a centrist.

But South Park showed us that Al Gore was a weird nerd who was afraid of something that doesn’t exist! hahaha ManBearPig he’s super cereal!!!