WellWisher

Trumps going to keep killing people until they negotiate The Ayatollah was a consistent veto on any breakthrough It will be impossible to replace him with someone who has the same authority He was the last divine monarch with a legacy carried from before modernity which sees the replacement of monarchs with a vast scalable bureaucracy (unless you have robust market institutions to run things) Khomeini was a leader on paper the Iranian guard has the hard power. He only wielded as much power as he did because of his entrenched cultural position. It’s the same situation in Thailand. The previous King ruled in name only but was still an important figure for green lighting the transitional governments put up by the military junta. When he died in 2016 the new king did not have the cultural authority to validate the Junta which increased pressure on a democratic transition. Without Khomeini and his circle they will eventually find someone in the Iranian Guard who is willing to negotiate. Similar to Venezuela changing the leadership without changing the actual regime which makes for an easier transition. The guard is unlikely to voluntarily hand over power to their oppositions after murdering their families and facing prospects of prosecution. The question is will we need the Iranian guard to negotiate or will the Kurds and some Iranian military factions or militia finish force their hand. It seems unlikely anyone could challenge the Iranian Guard without US ground troops helping. The easiest would be for the Guard to negotiate and negotiate fast or they’ll find themselves in a similar position as Hamas. Dying slowly and losing leverage. This isn’t going to be World War Three. The entire Middle East has turned on Iran. The region doesn’t need to retreat into fundamentalism like the colonial age when they got humiliated and all Islam had to compete on was “moral superiority” Saudi Arabia is modernized. Now Arabs know they can compete, they have more confidence. The people in the Middle East want to be strong and prosperous not weak and poor. We’re entering a new political reality and I’m excited to move on from the last one. Russia and China used Iran as long as they could and know how to cut loose a dead weight. If we’re lucky it will even end with the Russia wrapping up the Ukraine war since they’ve lost more allies.

Both sides of this debate, in my view, are unwilling to confront the issue head on, which is to say that men get horny and want to have sex and they’re annoyed if they can’t get it from their wives, who they feel on some level are obligated (and should want to) provide it. From the men’s point of view this is something that they desire, something that they want, something that they enjoy, something that only their wives can give them, and the general message is that this is at bottom not a serious concern. Neither side wants to take this seriously. Women just say outright that this is a crass, unimportant concern, so then men, some of whom seem to agree with that assessment, try to frame it as though the sex is really about connection and feeling and emotional completeness and really you need to have sex with us because this is how we express love in a relationship. The only way through this is just to say directly that men get horny, they want sex, and it’s very annoying when their wives won’t give it to them. The women in their lives either take this seriously and treat the concerns of their husband as something worth caring about and addressing, even if part of them thinks it’s kind of base and crass, or they don’t. And so while for many men it’s not really true that the sex itself is about connection and emotion, the lack of it is absolutely about denial and rejection and an unwillingness to provide something that the man feels is so simple to provide. From the man’s point of view it’s just like, actually I am very simple, actually my needs are very simple, actually it is very simple to provide for me what I need and what I desire, actually you have all the tools to provide it, actually it’s not even a little bit complicated. And yet.

It's genuinely crazy how unspiritual Muhammad's view of paradise was. It's such a sordid, undignified, and materialistic view on what the afterlife will look like. It seems too absurd to believe, and too obviously geared towards slaking the lusts of 7th century tribesmen.

You guys all know this actually happened, right? During the first term, Trump pulled from storage and used the drapes HILLARY picked out in the Oval when she was First Lady. Every time Trump was on TV in the Oval, she saw HER drapes. Absolute MADMAN. We don’t deserve him. 🇺🇸

Nothing in the old testament, with its endless plagues and floods, is as terrifying as Christ trying and failing numerous times to get a girlfriend.

Got banned from an atheist gc for Islamophobia wtf

there's a sex therapist who has a ritual of making out with her husband every night before bed, and so many of the comments on her posts are some version of "but what if he gets turned on and I don't want to have sex" and i need men to understand and prioritize non sexual touch.

Muslim parents in the US must tell their children to not take part in the pledge of allegiance, you are pledging allegiance to a kafir republic and I don’t think I need to explain how it’s problematic

nonsexual touch is actually magical and a cornerstone of a good marriage, you're all just pornbrained beyond any resemblance of sanity

How my wife looks at me when I ask for sex after an hour of tongue kissing and over-the-pants-stroking

what I learned from this is that if you make out with your husband but don't want to have sex, he'll be mad at you. this is great!!!!!!!!! who knows why dead bedrooms exist when husbands are this great!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m obsessed with perusing the profiles of these pretty white reverts and trying to understand their psychology