I made the mistake of balking at some particularly unhinged Ukraine/Russia rhetoric offline yesterday and got called a vatnik, a tankie, a Russia lover and I was even suspected of being pro-Israel and apparently a nazbol Aimee Therese follower or something
I'm not even invested in this shit, I just find the insane saber-rattling and warmongering unsettling 
When someone tells you Putler's going to invade Estonia, Poland and Finland for Lebensraum next if he's not stopped in Ukraine, just nod your head solemnly
counterpoint: trueanon rule: be normal
Death to America
There are ways to hide your power level but you have to be very accomodating, not get heated, and figure out what direction to guide someone to get them started questioning the dominant narrative, instead of going debate bro mode. People want to be listened to and respected, and will remember your tone, affect, and willingness to treat them like a person far more than they will your points 90% of the time.
Don’t: rant to people how you comment on here among communist hardliners
Do: understand their language and worldview, twist it rhetorically to serve our ends. Class war against all bourgeois parties domestically, anti-imperialism abroad. These are essential to be pushed at all times among any western leftist.
In groups settings, pushback and mockery can completely turn a vibe around.
I feel this, but at the end of the day I guess I'm not really interested in socializing with people who can handwave away a man holding his headless child
The “normal” in America is incoherent potato in a sack with a random grab bag of loosely held opinions on a bullet point list of “issues”.
Instead of trying to be a rational debater building on first principles and being boring as hell and caught up in the liberal gishgallop, you should instead find their language and speak it - insofar as it aligns with communism in any way.
Most people aren’t “normal” is the boring CNN way. Most people have a few “extreme” beliefs that are incoherent when held with their other opinions.
If I’m talking to a libertarianesque boomer white guy with a few conspiracisms I will talk about NSA, CIA coups, US deep state, corporate lobbying and control, democracy being incompatible with large capital accumulation, wars, etc.
If I’m talking to my social liberal Egyptian Muslim aunt I will focus on US destroying Arab nationalism, Nasser, Israel, the destruction of the progressive nations throughout the Middle East and backing of extremist jihadist forces that are all complete infidel mercenaries posing as devout Islamists - fake Muslims.
Don’t “be normal”. Read the room and speak in their language, always bring the point back to anti-imperialism, revolutionary defeatism & class war. These concerns override all others when speaking of politics in the imperialist west, however you can twist the potatoes logic against them towards these aims is how you should approach it
If I had to choose between listening to the revolutionary hero Mao Zedong or the attention-seeking podcaster who sometimes does good interviews Brace Belden . . .