Popularizing Socialism is only good if you can deliver on the promises, if you can't the consequences are of an epic proportion.

fart sniffing idealism

There's a portion of this that's true, but all it will ever achieve is "normalizing". There's some value in that, but I kinda think polling suggests: mission accomplished! Most Americans think socialism is pretty normal, especially young ones. Our job is to actually build socialism as a material reality, not a normal idea.

"Yes, man-on-twitter. That is how you redefine socialism to be palatable to liberals. They will still turn you in though."

That said, there has been a massive upswing in people even just talking about socialism, which is kinda funny and scary... But like people don't even know what Marxism is, negative or positive, around where I am. Hell, most of them don't know it's even communism, which is extremely funny when you can get them to agreed with Marxist points after they have spent like fifteen minutes bashing socialism.

But literally most people around where I am all hate the Democrats, but some of them love Republicans. But by hating the Democrats I am able to make some level of educational leeway. Maybe not as impactful, but at least I know people who I can talk about real ass socialist history with, some of whom then proceeded to educate themselves on it after I introduced them to the concepts.

And part of my own education came from a guy I lived with whose roommate was the boyfriend of someone who was extremely involved in the National DSA. Extremely well versed, extremely Marxist, extremely anti-imperial and pro-Palestine.

Mamdani is must less interesting than the DSA, but it is unfortunate how much energy has been diverted to this guy and not the party apparatus itself.

"Socialism" in their eyes is nordic countries with free healthcare and that's about it. And while universal healthcare is a good goal (even though it will literally never happen in the imperial core) that alone is not socialism. Speaking to the choir, duh, but so many burgerlanders are like "yeah I'm a socialist, I like Denmark"