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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
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Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
The whole NATO expansion thing has a lot in common with deplatforming. The claimed principle in both cases is free association, the actual goal in both cases is marginalization. A rightist having a meltdown, calling his opponents a bunch of fucking nazis and hopefully attacking them is the best outcome. He outs himself as the villain and you can destroy him with a clear conscience. And the best thing is, he is actually a villain, like a starving peasant turning to highway robbery or an incel turning to date rape.
And the worst thing for Russia is, this is not the end. There's absolutely no guarantee Russia won't remain a designated bogeyman, a Piliguinia, even if it loses convincingly, even if Putin is not allowed to remain in charge, even if it admits total blame for every war it took part in since 1618 and shows its belly in general. As I've said on the old motte, there's no one left in Russia who can pull off what Witte did in Portsmouth or Talleyrand did in Vienna.
This is what happens when a country goes out of its way to screw its neighbors for hundreds of years. There's almost nobody in Eastern Europe who has any faith that Russia wouldn't gobble them up if given a chance.
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