All true, but socialists do sometimes have opportunities to speak to large numbers of people who may be relatively open to new ideas. If you become a substitute teacher, which is relatively easy in the USA, you will eventually find yourself discussing these things, sometimes with large groups of students who themselves are probably more open to socialism than the average USAer because school is so amazingly unbearable here. (As a sub, you also don't really have to worry about jeopardizing your career, since you have no career to speak of.) When I was in high school several local politicians—not all of them elected—were invited to speak in our classroom as well as in the auditorium. None of them were socialists but they nonetheless made quite an impression (one said that he believed that yoga was our path to the stars). Imagine having the chance to tell students that they should consider unionizing and striking to get what they want. I hated high school but never thought of these possibilities, and it might have made a difference if someone had actually mentioned them to me, which no one ever did.