There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
“I find that the crazy narcissists, the selfish loons are often the most fun to be around, weirdly.”
“More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.”