Just to clarify, Im talking about my face to face interactions with people. I know social democracy is imperialist, unworkable, and doomed to fail. But I have trouble articulating why socialism is the only way forward. I can point out all the problems with capitalism, though.
There’s too much baggage associated with the S word; people immediately point to 100 billion dead vuvuzela. If I had to think of the biggest stumbling block to convincing people, it’s the controversial history associated with socialism. And I just don’t know enough about each individual “atrocity” and “failure” that happened in order to debunk it all. I feel like in order to convince anyone, you have to know basically the entire history of every socialist country by memory. And if I cared enough I could probably learn, but then I give into my pessimism and think “what’s the point? The people are too propagandized to convert.”
Probably the wrong comm to post in, but I give up trying to think of the right one to mark this as.
Yep. If you're an American like me, it's very possible that giving it a name like "socialism" is actually unhelpful. Americans have such absolute brainworms regarding that word, they seem to just completely shut down once it's mentioned. If it's someone you'll interact with more than once, if you start just talking positions they will in all likelihood think you have some good thoughts if they too are working class. Build up that trust and eventually if you decide to give it a name they may actually consider that this "socialism" thing isn't as scary as they were led to believe.