I had a based af English teacher in 10th grade that had us read A People's History. I was going through a libertarian phase before I read it and threw out my Ron Paul books half way through finishing it. It made me really think hard about how yes, the US government is fucking awful, but it wasn't so much that its just government was bad. It was who was running it and how evil capitalism and imperialism was that made me think smaller government would somehow fix the things I didn't like.

I was lucky to also have a good friend who was from Russia and actually talked about communism a lot. I didn't really have a strong opinion about communism or socialism like some people do when they're liberals. The red scare stuff died out already, and I had already understood systematic oppression in the US. The more I thought about the boot straps bullshit, the less sense it made just from my own experiences working at a young age. Pretty thankful for that book and my teacher. Maybe I would have figured it out anyways because I was so interested in history, but it helped me be less cringe at 15 so that was good lol