I just think that "enlightened centrism" is sort of intellectually lazy at this point.
Obviously you don't have to agree with everything that a side does, but I think it's extremely easy to just throw your hands up in the air and say "both sides are bad!" and then turn your brain off. It is the facsimile of an enlightened opinion, but you didn't actually do anything to earn it.
There are plenty of things that the American left do/say that I don't agree with [1], but I don't think the logical conclusion of that is to just act like both sides are equally horrible.
[1] For example, I fundamentally do not agree with the (at least one point) popular leftist opinion of decreasing military funding.
"Both sides are bad" simply provides cover/defense for the side that's actually worse. There are degrees of badness and "both sides" ignores that degree.
Obviously you don't have to agree with everything that a side does, but I think it's extremely easy to just throw your hands up in the air and say "both sides are bad!" and then turn your brain off. It is the facsimile of an enlightened opinion, but you didn't actually do anything to earn it.
There are plenty of things that the American left do/say that I don't agree with [1], but I don't think the logical conclusion of that is to just act like both sides are equally horrible.
[1] For example, I fundamentally do not agree with the (at least one point) popular leftist opinion of decreasing military funding.