I'm a left-of-center centrist.
I hold strong, ideological or rational (at least, I think they're rational...) opinions, that are generally left wing, but not all of my opinions fall into a strictly left wing bucket (and honestly I disagree ideologically with the concept of a "left wing bucket," but have to put up with it for the sake of conversation), but I still believe most of them fairly strongly, or with what I think is a solid foundation. That being said, I'm willing to let reality intrude on my preconception, something that is very, very threatening to most ideological purists, and most ideological purists would prefer to lash out in aggression at someone rather than resolve the conflict between reality and their opinion.
Many people think that a centrist is someone who puts their arms up and says, "Eh, I don't know who to blame?" or "Eh, I don't know who is right and wrong!" but, for me, I have a solid belief in who is to blame and a solid belief in who is right and wrong. Being a centrist doesn't mean you have no strong opinions, being a centrist means that you can have very strong opinions about reality but don't think that they fit convenient into a left/right, progressive/conservative, authoritarian/liberty dichotomy. For instance, there's nothing strictly progressive about the legality of drugs, and there's nothing strictly conservative about the legality of drugs. Legal drugs would fit very conveniently into a far-right libertarian conservative ideology: Let the market decide if drugs should be legal or not, and it would even fit into an individualists ideology. But, my view on legal drugs is that most drugs should be legal, but as a society we have to be equipped to to handle the consequences through market regulation, government oversight, and social welfare. So, in one sense, I'm conservative individualist focused on liberty: I want the the market to determine the efficacy of drugs, yet, in another sense, I want a government institution to oversee the production, sale, consumption, and social effect of drugs, which is trending towards a left-of-center statist ideology. I believe this very strong, I think that the war on drugs (generally a conservative program) is fucking stupid and makes the world worse; and yet, I don't think that there is no consequence for drugs, I think that their existence creates a social obligation that the government should fill, the very thing that I'm criticizing for how it's overseen drug regulation. This is a left-of-center centrist point of view, it's recognizing that there is value in individual liberty (oh no!), there is a place for the market (capitalist pig!) and yet, it believes that government is the best tool to fulfill the social responsibility of those consequences (radical socialist nanny-stater!). And I hold this opinion fairly strongly, though, I am willing to change my opinion when confronted with reality something that ideological purists typically aren't equipped to do, because challenging your own strongly held notion of something is a very very uncomfortable, threatening thing to our egos (this is called "learning" and "maturing"). Some people might look at my position on drugs and say, "oh, that's not a centrist position, that's a progressive, liberal position through and through," and you'd be wrong: you're taking an idea that you probably agree with and bending the definition of statism, or government authority, or individual freedom, or anything else, to adapt to what you think you are because that's less threatening to your ego.
I think a lot of people misconstrue how a centrist might be comfortable in their opinions, and they think, "Well centrists are middle of the road, 'why upset the apple cart' because they want to be comfortable." It's the opposite. IT's very uncomfortable to have your ideological biases challenged and be willing to challenge them yourself, where as it is very comfortable to retreat into a strong bias. There's a strong psychological and physiological basis for this too, where past studies on confirmation bias have shown similar reactions in brain chemicals to getting your first hit of a drug as you're going into withdrawal. This is why Fox News exists, because it's a safe place for conservatives who want to seek comfort, because the world of reality -- expressed by the "centrist" New York Times (which it isn't by the way, it's just good reporting, again, good reporting isn't left/center/right) -- is an uncomfortable place where your biases are challenged.
There's an overwhelming compulsion to reduce everything to a left vs. right, conservative vs. progressive, etc., dichotomy, and I just don't subject myself to that. I think it's really stupid, not productive at all, and at odds with reality. But because our politics is so tribalistic today more so than it ever has been, it's getting reductive to the point of idiocy. For instance, if I said, "Both conservatives and progressive play this tribalistic game where they reduce everything to the point of un-reality," I'm sure there's a solid... 10% of people at this forum who would quote that sentence and say something to the effect of, "Ugh I'm so sick of this both-sideism, so you think that putting children in cages and having nazis marching in the street is okay??" -- completely validating my point.
We're so reductive that we're making ourselves stupider, incapable of actually talking about ideas, policy, and issues. Unfortunately, it is a centrist opinion to not be reductive anymore, to recognize nuance in opinion and nuance in other genuine good-natured people. It's sad and embarrassing that it's generally those closer to the center, from the political extremes, that recognize this reality while so many others are so trapped in groupthink that scoring points calling a centrist a nazi or a nazi enabler (or, making 'nazi' and 'nazi enabler' synonymous) is something that gives them mental comfort. Now, obviously the right is way worse about this than the left, but lately especially in the social circles I float in, the modern left has borrowed the reductive idiocy of the classic right and is trying to use it to pursue their own ideology purity.
I think this recent disdain from the further left for "Liberals" is a symptom of this social disease, too. There are so many threads about ideology where someone thinks it's a cogent point to say something like "Ugh, Liberals are gross" or "Neoliberals are gross," and I want to be like "... do you even know what the words you're using mean... or are you just saying them to feel good about how tribalistic you are?"
