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Not so at all.

Good. I'm glad we agree that communism is possible and liberalism is a sham.

Communism works very, very well when you know everyone.

China, Vietnam, Laos, the DPRK, Cuba—these aren't communist countries? If China, for example, isn't actually communist, I assume you would have no issue then with the CPC taking control of the USA, since the result would be the same as the Democrats or the Republicans currently running the show? I know you would probably say: "oh, that would be horrifying, because according to the Nazis in the CIA, the Chinese are genociding Uyghurs, it's not as though the USA has been slaughtering millions of Muslims around the planet for decades. The millionaires-paid-by-billionaires on CNN and in The New York Times repeatedly assert without presenting any evidence that there's also no freedom of speech in China (they also lied about Iraq's WMDs but I still trust them for some reason). I, for instance, have no issues at all when I openly discuss unionizing my workplace in front of my boss in the USA. I can also publicly threaten violence against government officials in the USA without any consequences. It's not as though the USA locks up more people per capita than any other country on Earth, including China. This is freedom."

Further strong hints that China is communist: the country has not fought any wars in decades (because it is not controlled by the military industrial complex, unlike the USA). Universal health care and the construction of ten thousand kilometers of bullet train tracks both strongly undermine private capital in China (as does the regular execution or expropriation of billionaires who get out of line. The USA loves executing people, but for some odd reason none of them are rich?). More than 90% of Chinese people own their own homes, strongly undermining the existence of landlords (compare with 65% of Americans owning their homes—though roughly half of those homes are actually owned by banks). Inflation, for all intents and purposes, does not exist in China; inflation strongly favors the owners of capital versus the proletariat, i.e., people who own no capital. Chinese people are also highly educated—far more so than Americans—and all of them learn about Marxism-Leninism in school, unlike Americans, who are forced to learn about these subjects on their own (since any teacher who brings it up will lose their job and possibly even their life in our precious democracy). Don't you think that people who actually read Marxist texts are better qualified to judge whether a country is communist or not, compared with people who have never picked up a Marxist text in their lives? Why is China compelling its people to study Marxism if it is not in fact a communist country? Isn't that a remarkably and even pointlessly dangerous policy for a country that is only supposedly masquerading as communist to undertake?

The reality is that these are communist countries. You say, without presenting evidence, that human nature changes slowly. If you knew about dialectical materialism, you would be aware that quantitative buildup produces sudden qualitative change. Heat is applied to a pot of water for several minutes until bubbles suddenly appear, effecting a sudden change from liquid to gas. Human society is no different. Months before the February Revolution took place, Lenin himself said it would be years, maybe decades before there was a revolution in Russia. Yet a revolution took place. In a historical heartbeat, Russia changed from backward feudal hellhole to the world's first workers' democracy. Sometimes even the sharpest people, the ones best in touch with the masses, don't see it coming.

I don't think the situation in the USA is as advanced as it was in Russia toward the end of WW1. But class consciousness is definitely growing here, despite the best efforts of the American ruling class to beat it out of us. Those of us who have survived the pandemic thus far are absolutely furious with the pieces of shit running the country. Workers are unionizing, radicalizing, and growing ever more hostile to bosses, bourgeois customers, and their running dogs in the government. Communism has not been this popular in the USA since the 1930s. The biggest protests in American history took place in 2020; American protestors did amazing things (burning down police stations) few if any communists here thought they were capable of doing. Rifts among the bourgeoisie are growing—with liberals and conservatives repeatedly arresting one another and accusing the other side of treachery—which presents opportunities for workers. The US Proxy War in Ukraine likewise presents opportunities for workers around the world to throw off the yoke of imperialism, as they are currently doing in places like Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The growth of BRICS and dedollarization could rapidly intensify the contradictions of life in the USA, as the government is forced to pay for its activities with taxes on Americans rather than taxes on the rest of the planet.

but the USSR, China, Cuba, and others, have been effectively dictatorships.

Indeed, they were and are dictatorships of the proletariat, as opposed to the USA, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The famines you mentioned were consequences of the catastrophic feudal orders the workers overthrew in these countries. You cannot simply press the communism button and make everything instantly perfect; capitalism itself was also not built in a day. Famines in places like Russia and China were a regular issue before workers took power; they ceased to be a problem within decades of workers taking control. (Today, Chinese people eat better and healthier than Americans, ten percent of whom are "experiencing food insecurity," i.e., starving.) No evidence has ever been presented that any communist country has ever purposefully committed genocide (although communist countries are laser-focused on eliminating Nazism and depriving the bourgeoisie of power—which liberals in the USA mistake for genocide). The USA, which has committed more genocides than any country that has ever existed, including Nazi Germany (a fact disputed by no one), also has no right of any kind to criticize any communist country.

I tend to have a lot of respect for people that will admit that they don't know what the solution looks like, while decrying both the communism that has existed as well as capitalism as it now exists. I have much less respect for people that insist that they know for certainty that this or that will work.

Imagine saying this about a concept like gravity. Human societies are part of the natural world and can be understood scientifically. But you do have to do your homework, and that means reading theory and history and doing praxis. And to read liberal history and theory is like reading Aristotle instead of Einstein. To do liberal praxis is the equivalent of praying to an idol in a temple rather than performing experiments in a laboratory.