It's not fully distributed. All the decision-making nodes are controlled by Stellar. Just because there is stake-based voting involved does not mean the underlying system is distributed.
I'll take a semi-centralized system with respected public figures as advisors over a theoretically decentralized system that is actually ran by a few anonymous miners.
Emphasis on "semi-trusted", i.e. "not worth shit from a decentralization standpoint".
Now, technically your node can have a different trust list and come to a different consensus. You don't want to do that, though, because then you're stuck on a different version of the transaction history from the one everyone else accepts and any money you receive is likely worthless because it's not recognised by the rest of the network.