You're thanking the wrong guy in the picture. Gorbachev deserves credit for seeing that Soviet communism was a failure. The rest of us already knew that. Kudos for seeing the obvious seems a bit generous.

Communists - other than the cynical thugs who always end up in charge - have no monopoly on optimism. Was Ronald "Morning in America" Reagan not an optimist? Was Barack "Hope" Obama not an optimist? (And that's assuming for argument's sake that communists are optimists when their whole worldview is based on expecting capitalists to behave badly.)

Certainly we in the USA can organize ourselves better than we are now. We WERE better organized in 1960. Things were better then for most Americans, but worse for many Americans. Like almost everywhere, race or ethnicity or religion or caste bedevils us. Communism purports to end those things, and in that it is optimistic literally to a fault. It has failed everywhere because it does not work. It is optimistic in the way the guy singing "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" is optimistic. Such foolishness is hardly a selling point.

Ironically, many Americans have turned to Trump for the same reason they turned to communism ninety years ago. "What have you got to lose?" is a winning strategy when your standing in line for bread or your Congress has a sub-20% approval rating. But the Great Depression ended, and America's current funk can end, provided we don't go too far to the left or too far to the right.

MAGA delenda est.