Did you watch much news? When I didn't really have a specific name for my ideology and I was just questioning the status quo, I wasn't super attentive to the news cycle which I think is part of why I became a socialist rather quickly. I've talked with family and sometimes I get them to agree about something like workers are being exploited by their employers in a general sense, but as soon as it's time to talk about a specific issue like the labor shortage they have a line prepared about how the new generation is lazy, people became reliant on unemployment checks, and all these arguments that are clearly regurgitated. Talked with a vaguely lefty friend (agrees with me on police, landlords, healthcare, etc) about China and he basically had a speech prepared about the Dalai Lama and Tibet. For people who already know the US imperialist line, you NEED to know a what's factually wrong about the most common accusations. Just getting them to acknowledge that US imperialism has made every situation the US has gotten involved in worse won't be enough because they'll just say "this time it's different, X is worse than Nazi Germany so the US is justified in intervening." Wish more people were like you or I who learned early on that US intervention made everything worse but :foucault-madness: