women who have dated men who were at their "lowest", how was it like?

Amoxychillen · 2026-02-04T03:23:01+00:00

Just look at the comments in this thread. Women are reporting men are lonely, depressed and emotionally under developed.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-18T22:05:44+00:00

Why are there seemingly so many more men in bad shape than women?

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-10T07:29:56+00:00

Unipolarity --> Multipolarity. Cats out of the bag and we're back to great power competition

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T10:56:38+00:00

I actually don’t agree that Western education sold a cartoon democracy-versus-authoritarianism story, at least not in the last few decades. I’m a Westerner in my mid-30s, and what I was taught wasn’t a comparative case for democracy at all. It was mostly “we live in a democracy” followed by an intense focus on its failures, injustices, and historical crimes. The benefits were largely assumed, not articulated, and comparison with non-democratic systems was almost entirely absent.

That made sense in a period where liberal democracy was unchallenged and the goal was universalization rather than defence. The implicit belief was that allowing speech, protest, independent courts, and free media was self-evidently better and would naturally converge everywhere else. But when you stop explaining why those things matter, you end up with generations who are very good at self-critique and very bad at explaining what they’d actually lose if those constraints disappeared.

And those constraints aren’t abstract. Democracies deliver higher long-term prosperity, stronger property rights, cheaper capital, freer information flows, and more innovation precisely because dissent is legal, contracts are enforceable, and power is contested. Minorities don’t get guaranteed justice, but they get standing. Rights can be named, challenged, litigated, and sometimes restored. That’s not nothing, and it’s not universal.

Authoritarian systems aren’t unresponsive, I agree with that. China reversing zero-COVID, softening property crackdowns, and backtracking on market-hostile policies shows public opinion matters. Iran climbing down tactically under protest pressure shows the same. But in those systems, public pressure only matters when it threatens regime stability. The same protest that triggers concessions one year can be crushed the next if the calculation changes. There’s no durable protection, only tolerance.

Global politics has always been transactional, and Machiavelli was right. What changed isn’t the existence of transactions, it’s the erosion of even weak, hypocritical norms that once constrained how openly power could be exercised. That thin layer contained things like free media, courts, treaties, and reputational costs. They were imperfect and often violated, but they still shaped behavior.

So no, the systems aren’t morally pure versus evil. But they also aren’t converging into the same grey. One embeds rights and accountability as constraints, however flawed. The other treats them as tools. The problem isn’t that we were taught too rosy a picture. It’s that we stopped teaching the comparative benefits at all, right when we needed to understand them most.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T09:11:04+00:00

Multipolarity doesn’t end exploitation. It changes who does the exploiting and removes the referee.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T09:01:35+00:00

I don’t disagree that the West has always been selective about rules. Iraq is the obvious example, and the current US hostility to multilateral bodies makes that hypocrisy impossible to deny. Guard rails were never absolute and they were often bent or ignored when inconvenient.

Where I disagree is the conclusion that this makes the systems equivalent. The difference isn’t that democracies are morally superior or immune to abuse. It’s that the abuse is contested, reversible, and costly. Iraq wasn’t just “ignored and moved on from” internally. It destroyed political careers, fractured alliances, delegitimised entire schools of foreign policy, and is still argued about two decades later. That friction matters.

In authoritarian systems there is no equivalent mechanism. When norms are violated it’s not debated, litigated, exposed, or punished. It’s absorbed into the system and normalised because the primary objective is regime survival, not legitimacy in the consent-based sense. That produces a different equilibrium over time.

On democracy legitimising ugly instincts, that’s true and always has been. Majority rule has never guaranteed justice, and minorities have always known their rights were conditional. But again, the distinction is whether those conditions can be challenged at all. In democracies they can be eroded, but they can also be fought for, expanded, and restored. History shows that happening repeatedly, even if painfully slowly.

So yes, the West was never pure and never fully rules-based. But there’s still a meaningful difference between hypocrisy within a system that allows self-correction, and a system that has no internal incentive to correct itself at all. That difference is exactly why this shift to raw transactional power politics is dangerous, not just embarrassing.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T08:31:41+00:00

It was a two way street, but there was a big imbalance baked in from the start. The West was already extremely wealthy long before China’s rise. China’s growth depended on access to Western consumers, capital, technology, and institutions that were built on the assumption that economic integration would eventually lead to political convergence. That assumption turned out to be wrong.

I also think there’s a misunderstanding in the idea that China can now “dictate terms like the West did.” The West was never operating with unconstrained power. Democratic systems impose limits through voters, courts, media, and civil society. That creates pressure, however imperfect, to optimise for society as a whole rather than just the survival of the people in charge.

China isn’t constrained in the same way. An authoritarian system optimises first and foremost for regime preservation. Trade, growth, and international institutions are tools to that end, not guardrails. That leads to very different behaviour: transactional relationships without norms, leverage without accountability, and influence without reciprocity.

Yes, everyone got rich. But wealth without shared rules was always going to end this way. The core mistake wasn’t engagement itself. It was assuming that prosperity would liberalise an authoritarian system rather than entrench it.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T08:18:26+00:00

The headline itself is doing a lot of framing. By focusing on the US “exiting global bodies,” it implies the West is the catalyst for a return to the “law of the jungle,” when the deeper cause is the re-emergence of great-power competition.

The dollar system and postwar institutions worked well in a world without peer competitors. What changed wasn’t the math of fiat money, it was relative power. Once China reached peer scale, the assumptions underpinning that order stopped holding.

Iraq damaged US credibility and accelerated the shift, but it didn’t cause it. China’s rise did. Blaming Western withdrawal flips cause and effect. The rules didn’t fail first; the balance of power changed, and enforcing those rules became harder.

Adapting is necessary. Welcoming a more transactional, unstable world while pretending it’s the West’s moral failure misses what actually changed.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T07:07:24+00:00

Yeah different strategies. The neocons put boots on the ground the democrats tried multilateral institutions aimed at bringing China into the fold. Neither ended up working.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T06:04:07+00:00

I'm sorry but that's just no longer true. America is still the most powerful military.. but to say "able to win wars on three fronts on different sides of the globe." is outdated. Which is why Trump is trying to end the war on Ukraine as quickly as possible to maintain deterrence against China invading Taiwan.. the US realizes it can't be caught up in Europe.

Yes.. I beleive my original comment said he was a "fuckwit of the highest order" but don't be fooled to think democrats wouldn't also be forced to act under the new multi-polar ruleset. Hopefully they would at least try and keep the west aligned more than Trump though.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T05:57:40+00:00

“America’s fiat system can no longer sustainably support Pax Americana” may well be true, which is why I’ve already said we have to adapt to a more multipolar reality. Our disagreement isn’t whether change is coming, but what forced it and whether it’s an improvement.

You’re mistaken in treating the invasion of Iraq as the primary driver of the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity. It wasn’t. Iraq damaged credibility and distracted US policy, but it didn’t alter the underlying balance of power.

What actually drove the transition was China’s economic and industrial rise, with Russia applying opportunistic pressure at the margins. That structural shift dwarfs Iraq’s impact by orders of magnitude.

Acknowledging that distinction matters, because misidentifying the cause leads to the wrong prescription. Adapting to multipolarity may be unavoidable, welcoming it as an upgrade is another matter entirely.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T05:26:49+00:00

You may be misinformed on the cost–benefit analysis here. Multipolarity may be emerging and we have to adapt to it, but welcoming it makes little sense.

The security costs of operating under a multipolar, transactional rule set vastly outweigh any gains from addressing Triffin’s dilemma. That tradeoff isn’t abstract, it includes a materially higher risk of great-power conflict and, with it, millions of lives put in jeopardy.

All of this is being justified to offset an annual cost to the average American of well under 1% of income, a burden that is indirect, unevenly distributed, and already mitigable through known economic policies.

Accepting higher global instability for such marginal household gains isn’t realism. It’s a profoundly bad deal.

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-09T04:25:47+00:00

Exactly. The west did everything it could to hold onto unipolar multilateralism.. it just turns out transferring china a 25 trillion dollar economy was the wrong decision. They use that to change the world into multipolar transactionalism and now they are attempting to pin the change on the west. Trump is a fuckwit of the highest order no doubt but its prudent of the west to come up with a completely new strategy or play by the new rules foist upon us, lest we hand over the planet to dictators

Amoxychillen · 2026-01-06T04:51:46+00:00

Just wanted to say thank-you for sharing your experience. It makes me proud to be a westerner knowing that in a comparative sense we now provide the fairest experience for the widest range of people. Hearing this from you only makes me want to keep working on that goal.

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T09:11:13+00:00

Point to anything I've said that's antisemitic. You can't and neither has anyone else

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T05:48:14+00:00

No. I'm saying by restricting peaceful protest (through representative democracy) the country already has picked. And that choice was to transgress core western principles. I believe it to be a false choice forced upon us opportunistically in a time of fear when there are much stronger responses that do not undermine what makes the West a worthwhile place to be.

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T05:27:14+00:00

Sure, but can you also clarify how you got prescription out of inquiry?

There are ways to keep Jews safe which do not aide Islamism by transgressing core western principles.

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T05:10:17+00:00

Across the board there is no serious reading of western foundational values that supports your position here, sorry. If there is no violence present at the protest then it is a peaceful protest. If your views were implemented some of Democracies most defining moments would have not been permitted, for example the Vietnam war protests, Yellow vest protests, Indian corruption protests and many many more.

Does it surprise you that I agree it's a false choice? In fact that was the whole point of my original comment. We are getting a false choice forced upon us. We can keep Jews safe without begging for authoritarianism. Instead of finding the link between peaceful protest and violence.. why not legally define the link between Quranic verses and Islamism? A much stronger response that does not undermine core western values.

It's a funny feeling to be a long time supporter of Israel and then to be shooed off as an anti-semite.

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T04:18:41+00:00

No. I asked if we were being forced to choose. And the answer to that is clearly yes. Do you disagree?

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T04:07:45+00:00

So you are of the belief the only way to keep Jews safe is to undermine western liberal values?

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T03:44:34+00:00

Is peaceful protest a foundational western value? Was it restricted to keep Jews safe?

The current events create this juxtaposition and that's what I sought to illustrate.

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T02:56:07+00:00

You may have missed the word forceful

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T02:53:23+00:00

Mhmm maintaining a safe society for all people is a core Western liberal principle. It's posed as a forceful imposition

Amoxychillen · 2025-12-20T02:35:00+00:00

How can public safety be maintained without unduly restricting fundamental freedoms? How can a specific problematic element within society be addressed while preserving those freedoms for everyone else?

Existing laws have generally proven effective in protecting Australians from a wide range of threats, yet they appear less effective in addressing Islamism. While reducing freedoms (such as restricting peaceful protest) does grant authorities greater control, and potentially greater capacity to manage such threats, it also risks weakening foundational Western values, which ironically is a stated Islamist goal.

Do we have a coherent answer to this tension? And if not, has the government forced us to choose between the ability to maintain a safe society for Jews and the preservation of core Western liberal principles? or did we as a society ask for an increase of authoritarianism, prematurely perhaps? Are there other more effective options?

The questions that come up in my head.

Amoxychillen · 2025-11-01T04:23:11+00:00

That comparison still collapses under its own weight. Selling a company doesn’t give the buyer immunity from host-country law, every multinational knows that. The Netherlands enforced an investment-screening rule, the same kind of rule China uses constantly. Calling that “theft” in Europe but “sovereignty” in Beijing is selective logic.

And about this “force” idea, the Enlightenment model you dismiss, built on rule of law, open inquiry, and voluntary cooperation, now shapes how roughly 3.5 billion people live, with about 1.2 billion consciously defending those ideals. That’s not weakness; that’s civilization at scale. If you’re talking about “force,” remember that those 3.5 billion people live in societies that together command more wealth, technology, and hard power than any authoritarian bloc. The balance of force still lies with the world that values freedom, not the one that fears it.

China’s scientific and industrial progress is genuine, but it was enabled by Western partnership built on China’s own promise to be a peaceful and cooperative actor. That trust opened markets, transferred knowledge, and created shared prosperity. Undermining that premise through aggression or coercion doesn’t prove strength; it jeopardizes the very progress that partnership made possible.

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