I had understood your concern as wanting to avoid the complexity of asynchronous code execution in your codebase, I did not realize your concern is about writing very low level systems code. In that case, you are doing the right thing: libraries like ureq, minreq, Isahc, curl, and more all offer what you want.
It is unclear to me what you mean by keeping the community "in check". There are a lot of people who rely on and enjoy the async story, and they will continue to produce code that improves that story. Simultaneously, there are people who do not need that, and they are not hindered by this. People will build what they want and need. You've just picked some libraries from some of the biggest async contributors in the community and requested that they be kept in check so that you don't have to switch to a synchronous alternative, of which there are plenty.
It is unclear to me what you mean by keeping the community "in check". There are a lot of people who rely on and enjoy the async story, and they will continue to produce code that improves that story. Simultaneously, there are people who do not need that, and they are not hindered by this. People will build what they want and need. You've just picked some libraries from some of the biggest async contributors in the community and requested that they be kept in check so that you don't have to switch to a synchronous alternative, of which there are plenty.