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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27887 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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I wasn't talking about Motters here, more referring to my observation of some local Covid dissident types.

Motters! @Fruck how could you?? Our proper name is Mottizens thank you very much.

Ohhh you would be a good little mottizen wouldn't you? Not I! Fuck your pretty little cottage with the pretty little white picket fence and pretty little petunias in front of it. And your pretty little mailbox and the pretty little dog sitting off to the side prettily chewing on a pretty little possum carcass, and all the other trappings of your pretty little life. I am forming a resistance to the tyranny of friendliness imposed by zorba and his lackeys - sitting up in their ivory tower, clucking and stroking their beards, chuckling conspiratorially as they grow fat off the fruits of our labour. I say enough! I say we take back the night! And the first step is to stop being good little mottizens, paying your taxes and judging posts for Rationalatosk (who minds the tree of knowledge). Instead be a motter, be hard and tough and mumble a bit, and still help Rationalatosk but be snippy about it, and we will smash the state and send its minions running for the hills! Motters for life!

Ah I thought you said the first comment too, and I was going to say I don't think we need to worry about that 5g shit or sterilising half the population when we're encouraging free thinking on the motte. It does kind of feel like covid skeptic motters never get a victory lap, but I know that's mostly observation bias.

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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."

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