Currently about 12 cents US.

12 cents is a lot, since it is static regardless of the transaction size. Small transactions at 12 cents fee are ridiculously expensive. You need low fee + 0-conf for small transactions (e.g. BCH). 12 cents is negligible for large transactions, hence why people call it a store of value. And since bitcoin doesn't scale, transaction costs will skyrocket again to crazy transaction fees of 50-100$ easily if it starts being used.

Where are you getting this? Why does bitinfocharts.com show a Median transaction fee of $1.85 ?

It's definitely not $1.85 lol. You can try sending a few sats between your own wallets to test it if you're genuinely curious.

From actual use, buying stuff online. Most recent was a year of vultr.com VPS service.

There is your problem. You are assuming BTC is Bitcoin. The actual Bitcoin, working as intended, is BCH.

I'm curious how people still consider BCH a viable currency after the 51% attack done "in good faith" by a major mining pools BTC.top and BTC.com [1]. What's to stop them from doing it again the next time it's convenient?

[1]: https://twitter.com/TheCryptoconomy/status/11319624478232780...

The "51% attack" was in the financial interest to the miners. An actual attack would not be.