This seems like a self-defeating argument - why didn't the American revolutionaries just hug it out with King George? You take the fact of their going to war as a given, like the weather, then turn around and pour scorn on grandparent posters' firm opposition to autocracy and level of knowledge ('the handful of dictators and “strongmen” you know off hand').

You seem to be characterizing ideologies as fight everything out vs talk everything out, and then saying that centrism is the 'muck in the middle' where compromises are brokered. Why, then would you invalidate the whole concept of opposition and dismiss them as ignorant?