CHINESEBOTTROLL
I mostly agree with your conclusion, but this is a very american (I.e. ignorant) response to her concern and i am not surprised she wasnt receptive. I think you underestimate the difference between a country like yours (which has always been a 'salad bowl' of cultures united by a commitment to liberalism) and mine (Germany, which is essentially a big tribe of tribes). This difference is even more stark if you look at a place like Denmark.
Here are a few of your points that gave me this impression:
Germany is actually younger than the US
Her concern is (to me) obviously independent of the state we happen to live under. Germaneness is not tied to a political entity. East Germans were German, Volga Germans are German and the German speaking people under the hre were German. ("German" Americans are not German btw.) This also makes your comment about
Her mom was an East German and described to us how they had an entirely separate culture
baffling (to me).
US culture has, ... tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.
The us is in many ways a much worse country than Germany (or almost any EU country). I don't see why we should strive to emulate that model.
My argument is not "look how many attempts have failed" but "look, of all of these many attempts, every single one has turned into a kafkaesque nightmare". At this point it is not even clear that "successful communism" is something that can exist in our world
On the other hand, while many (depending on your perspective you might even say most) capitalist systems fail, there are absolutely some that work ok. Of course nothing is perfect in the real world. But the life of say a danish person is not only materially well off, but also free and full of dignity, which was true of none of the experiments in communism
What about them? The choices here are not "what we have now" vs "trust the people that want to try communism again"
countries in which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat failed to cede power to the working class and establish a socialist economic structure
Oh, so like every single other place that tried to implement that deranged system? Thank you for this very important distinction.