I used to consider myself a centrist. But in my not-all-too-extensive lifetime, I’ve seen some of my views go from being considered centrist to being considered leftist to being considered radical leftist without changing. At some point, I just decided to say fuck it, you want to label me a leftist nutjob, I’ll roll with it.

Center is relative. And in the US, there’s been a documented and deliberate effort from conservatives to push the country’s political ideology further and further to the right for the past a little over fifty years, it started right after Nixon lost to Kennedy but really kicked into high gear during Nixon’s first successful presidential campaign. So being a centrist used to be a reasonable position to hold. But it shifted. It moved. It was moved to the point where being a centrist means holding the expert and the kook in equal regard. If you really want to be a centrist between ideologies, between pure socialism and pure capitalism, between authoritarian and libertarian, between all the different political, social, economic and other ideologies, we don’t have that. We’re so far conservative economically, politically, and in most other ways that our “left-wing” party is right-of-center.