TIL that Americans hate centrists, and that anyone that doesn't fully support the left must be fascists. What the fuck is going on in your country?

If someone says that they are “centrist” they are not telling you that they base all of their opinions on being in the middle of any two positions. That would be astoundingly stupid and is very much a straw-man take on the situation.

They are telling you that they agree with neither major party on everything, and find that both parties have views that they don’t agree with. It’s pretty easy to come to that conclusion because the US two-party system packs in an almost incoherent mishmash of beliefs into exactly two sides.

There is absolutely no contradiction in being for police reform, and against riots lasting for days. There is no contradiction in being for gun rights, while also wanting limits on them. There is no contradiction in wanting functional government services and universal healthcare, and thinking that free markets are effective. There is no contradiction in wanting a more balanced budget, and government services to be funded.

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

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 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.

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.

Substitute left for right, and you will find the same sort of commentary being made, except using different political talking points. The worst part about it is the hatred towards critical thinking shared by both sides. "Consider multiple arguments from their respective points of view, look at the evidence and rationales, and form my own judgements? No thanks, that's stupid, I'd rather believe all politics devolve into a line of people who are right versus people who are wrong while ignoring the exponential branches of information systems as they grow in complexity, totally isn't me devolving complex issues into tribalism."

Governments still work because there are still people within them capable of critical thinking, but I dread the day these morons begin to get elected and try to chest pump their ideology from all sides of the radicalized spectrum.

Incidentally, trying to call people who exist outside of the radicalized left-right schism centrists is just showing your ignorance and bias; when you don't devolve issues into simple left and right, there is no "center", nor does it mean everything is an indistinct shade of grey. It gets even more complex than that because of the tendency of radicals and external influence to try to portray everything into one of two sides, which does actually make political posturing be about the left and the right, but focusing on those takes is probably the biggest hint that you trying to base yourself on a flawed perspective without nuance.

It doesn't surprise me that most people choose to become a dot on a line because, quite frankly, most people (including me) are morons about the issues they try to approach as if they were experts, yet many still see themselves as infallible while doing so because of overextended projecting from some branch of a knowledge they are actually experts of. The left-right pantheon is basically the very hyper-rationalization of that projection. Trying to define that dot on the line is very much like the Romans who tried to establish a relationship between their deities and that of the locals in their path to conquest. I will admit, it certainly is very effective at manipulating the same sort of people who are easily tickled by their own ego.