I just had an almost really good moment with a group of students where the main guy that was arguing against me was going to have to make some pretty big admissions (he was defending trickle down economics and he was going with the old reliable"if you don't earn enough just work hard and come up with a better product so you can get rich"). However, a few people quickly started to say "well if Socialism is so good how come vuvuzuela cuba etc. etc." and this was a really tough point, because this is in Puerto Rico so one of them has been to Cuba, and he said something about how he couldn't believe the conditions they lived in. Funny enough, he just meant most people didn't own cars. But I really, really didn't want to risk saying that Cuba's conditions are actually great, or that Castro was a good leader, because that would just make me look like I'm insane to a crowd of young people who've heard nothing but "Cuba bad" their whole lives. I kind of lost control of the conversation at that point and I didn't get much progress; I'm afraid I may have even poisoned the well since I'm now kinda the Cuba Stan in a lot of their minds.
So yeah, how do you avoid this? I want to get some people to recognize that capitalism doesn't work, but it's really hard to do that when they're been brainwashed this badly. I don't want to do the "you could just be a demsoc" routine, but is that my only option? I'd prefer not to have to tell half truths about reformism being viable, but I also don't want to be the guy telling people to buy guns.
Cuba literally has a longer life expectancy than US
And the Communists achieved that while under a 6 decade long blockade
Castro is a great leader though and a hero to the world outside of US and its puppets in Nato
I think a crass statement like "Castro was great and a hero actually" would make you sound like a lunatic to uneducated libs and they'll immediately shut off.
You can't convince people immediately that who they thought was a dictator was actually a hero, you'll seem like a conspiracy nut. You have to cause doubt in their current beliefs and convince them over time that they've been lied to. Then you can start presenting a new ideology to them.
Confidence is attractive though. Confidence without knowledge is not though so I would read up on Cuba and get to a level where i feel confident in saying that
And what are you gonna do: say Castro sucks and you just want more rich people paying taxes?
Castro is a hero outside of US borders
I mean, this is exactly why I was asking though. I don't want to be the guy defending Castro in front of such a large group. I'd happily do it on a 1 to 1 conversation once we're back on campus, but over text? Most people wouldn't read over the entire conversation and all I'd do is, as UmbraVivi said, look like a lunatic. I would rather just try to stay on topic. I think I'm probably at my best when criticizing capitalism, since I'm pretty good at explaining how the relation between worker, capital, and owner is exploitative.