Why is everything so polarized now? No balance or middle ground to anything

Says the guy that wants to throat punch everyone, lol.

Seriously though, you’re right about polarisation and it does get boring.

Two words.

Polarization Industry.

Back not so long ago, there was a rule that news companies would have to give equal time to Democrats and Republicans. This rule was abolished in the 1980's.

The Polarization Industry evolved when news media companies found that RATINGS were better created to cater to ones viewpoint and make fun of or better yet outrage the viewer with far leaning radical viewpoints from the other side.

The results you are seeing today.

It's because the Left has politicized everything, and they're full of hate. They're the second largest hate group in the world, second only to Radical Islamic Terrorists.

😎

What exactly defines the middle ground here? What's a middle position on something in particular?

Everyone just thinks they're "centrists" - even the bat-shit crazy, racist, Covid denying skinheads think they're balanced.
And how did that happen? How have standards become so degraded that extremes are now accepted and treated as a normal side of debate?

That's because the most privileged among us, those with the least at stake, simply expect the "dirty" less-privileged "rabble" to be respectful and accomdating no matter how far the right sinks into depravity and authoritarianism. For what the "centrists" see as a greater threat is their own loss of exclusive privilege and status.

You have police forces that functions as a protection racket for the rich; for generations having brutalized minorities and feed them into the private prison-industrial complex.
You have police departments, such as that in Minneapolis, exposed for not solving any real crimes and amassing decades of untested rape kits that sat in cold storage because they believed their role was not to solve crime, but to enforce their bigoted authority upon the poor and minorities.
You have entire police departments infiltrated by White Supremacists according to FBI and criminal investigative reports.

You have the highest incarceration rate and the grossest inequality in the developed world; your health care system lags behind 3rd world nations, and you have one of the highest infant mortality rates and deaths from preventable causes in the developed world.
You cling to your military grade firearms and see them as more important than protecting your children from being used as target practice

You have peaceful protesters being murdered and journalists being attacked - all encouraged by the Orange laughing stock of the world who thinks a plaque that is killing you all is an exaggerated hoax.
You have his terrorist supporters preying upon the population and committing acts of violence on a monthly basis.

There is no common sense.

Let these people try their ideas and have a test to see if it was successful or a failure.

The problem with the left is alot of their ideas are huge gambles and sometimes dangerous.

No cash bail
Soft on crime
Open borders
No longer charging people for knowingly infecting another with HIV.
Getting rid of stop and frisk.

It's not true that everything is polarized. The problem is that the Silent Majority has been completely silenced by the wackos in social and mainstream media.

For example, look at this situation unfolding with JK Rowling. There's no drama like this going in the Real World. I could spend the next 100 days mired in conversations day in, day out with neighbors, friends, relatives and everyone and you won't hear anyone mired in any stupid drama about transgenderism. This whole "debate" is a complete media-concocted fiction but the entire thing is played in the media as if the entire world is in some epic battle about it.

Ditto everything else. No one in my neck in the woods knows anything about QAnon, Alex Jones, etc. but if you went by the media you'd think the entire world was into this crap.

"Social media has really shown how bad this has gotten."

Social media and the Internet are the root of this problem. In the past, people of a certain mindset were scattered about the country, with little contact among themselves. The new technology has made it easier for people with similar views to become connected and disseminate information quickly and efficiently. This enables them to become more vocal, which makes the groups appear to be more widespread than they are in reality.

Technological advances are good when they benefit humanity, but only up to a point. Today's polarization is an example of when too much technology becomes detrimental. There's over-reliance on social media to the exclusion of other forms of communication.

I would venture to guess that a majority of the population falls into the category of moderate or centrist. We need to hear more from these people.

Cuz one side keeps getting more and more bat shit extreme, leaving the other side no recourse but to shore itself up. All perpetuated by the media which is controlled by the one side. Social media rounds up the stragglers and sorts them where they need to go. All this strife and division is being orchestrated by the Elites to their design as they work at fast pace to institute their one world government cuz it's slipping away from them. Depending on how badly they destabilize things, it's not gonna be a civil war that's the problem, it's gonna be WWIII as other countries start making powerplays. Throw in a few natural disasters that roll in like clockwork these days and we have a real recipe for Armageddon.