My job isn’t high-paying yet but it has potential to be in the near future if I can hang on and not fuck things up. But together my spouse and I are basically at the bottom of the top ten percent in the USA. I have more money and financial security now than I ever have. And I’m just continually amazed at encountering people every day who think that this country is normal or that it has a future. I’ve been riding around with one of my coworkers for weeks. Imagine spending thirty hours a week with a hexbear who is trying to convert you to communism without using any Marxist trigger words. I was full of despair with this guy a few weeks ago. I even talked with my therapist about it. He told me the true cliché, that a patient can’t change unless they want to. And my coworker owns next to nothing. He is so much closer to homelessness than he realizes. And he still put out little American flags for Memorial Day at his house. Lately however things have gotten better. I’ve started using words like “communism” and told him about my desire to live in China. I don’t get any pushback. At the same time I know that he’s not a Marxist, he looks at Facebook for treats all the time despite the fact that he is broke and his girlfriend is heavily in debt, that without guidance or study he’ll drift straight back into deep reactionary thought. He could also just be humoring me. Personally we like each other. But sometimes it’s amazing how much you can get white male Americans to agree with, at least temporarily. Yesterday I told him that if the USA stopped fighting imperialist wars and if it gave all its land back to Native Americans, it would cease to exist. No pushback. No “that would be bad.” On the other hand, he said something super ignorant about how the government is trying to brainwash him with propaganda. He’s not wrong, but the idea that the government is just one of many tools used by the ruling class to enslave humanity—that just doesn’t register with these people. They love the police and military but hate the government, even if half the government budget goes to the police (while the bourgeoisie steal 99% of the value that American labor aristocrats generate).

I agree with others here: if you get rich and cease to be a communist, then you were never one to begin with. At the moment I’m donating as much as I can to Palestinians without pissing off my spouse.