The Free Will/Determinism question is a very pertinent one, especially in our own times of maximal change. In academic philosophy, Determinism has 2 distinctions which might be useful to your arguments, especially in the "all or nothing" schema - those distinctions being Soft Determinism and Hard Determinism.

I'll start with Hard Determinism - this is what most people think of when they think of having no free will. That is, being totally without any power of choice, a meat puppet under the control of forces beyond your ability to influence. Hard Determinism would correspond to what you are calling an absolute polarity, in harsh contrast to absolute free will.

Then you have Soft Determinism, which is essentially the idea that there is some free will, but all the options are constrained, like only being able to choose from what is already on the menu. So, you might say that Soft Determinism agrees with your degree/level/grade of free will argument.

As you note, words and definitions do matter. The problem is that in common parlance, most people do not understand the implications of their words, nor the consequences of their beliefs. Hence they sling around phrases and concepts that they do not realize are keeping them stuck. And engaging in false dichotomies only make things worse.

Love your posts! Looking forward to reading more from you, now that I am following.