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"Why don't you listen to both sides of the argument and make your own opinions and arguments based on that?"
Bitch, why do you think I'm a fucking leftist???
The enlightened centrist here comes across as a Republican too embarrassed to admit it -- it seems to be a core thought in conservatism that anyone who isn't conservative just hasn't formed an independent opinion, and if they did that, they'd be conservative.
Actually, I lean fairly hard left on most things but I often say I'm centre-left to leftists because the average person I meet online who identifies as a leftist is so sure they're right about everything that my response contrary by reflex.
Call me old fashioned, but a key component to being a responsible person is to maintain an open mind, even if that means considering shit for a quarter of a second before telling someone to go fuck themselves, rather than presupposing that they should go fuck themselves. That feels wrong.
I completely agree, and I usually describe myself the same way online because of how left some people are. Someone center left here is very left in reality on the American (and probably Western overall tbh) spectrum.
I think there's a saying that intelligence is the ability to consider a conflicting idea? It's almost always worthwhile to consider what someone's saying because there's no guarantee I'm actually right. The exception is things like "hey maybe the Nazis weren't so bad", and those are just absolutes where I can firmly say absolutely not. People just put too many things into that category sometimes.