Aawww thanks! Not gonna lie, I always thought hexbear was super annoying and hostile in other threads like other Lemmy users, but this one has been filled with such good conversations and educating answers without too much berating me about not knowing stuff that it definitely has made me re-think my original attitudes. I still disagree with ya'll about other issues, like attitudes towards the Ukraine-Russia conflict, but it doesn't mean we can't still have great conversations and I appreciate that 💙

You know, Cuba is a good gateway into socialism ideas in general now that I think about it, especially without a Castro brother there as an old authoritarian scapegoat to point at. The "authoritarian" label doesn't really hold up as well when it's some new guy whose name the public doesn't even know. Scare mongering like the kind done with China doesn't work, because they're not really a threat and they're too poor to affect our markets by buying companies or whatever. Now the only criticisms left are one party rule, the word "communism" is scary, and lack of press freedoms, and this graphic helps with the first one.