Post #4094960

Okay, it looks like it's time once again to discuss the miserable world of Motte and Bailey fallacies. A Motte and Bailey takes its name from an ancient fortress type with a safe tower (the motte) and a wide yard out in front (the bailey). How it works is you make a bold, controversial claim, such as "women should be hunted for sport because they're stupid and inferior" and when you can't back up claim, you immediately retreat to a broadly accepted, uncontroversial viewpoint like "what, we can't even discuss the pitfalls of the educational system anymore??" and then you pretend like the two are the same. The bailey allows you to say some truly unhinged bullshit and then pretend like disagreement with it equals disagreement with something obviously much more acceptable. Yesterday, the geriatric pedophile currently running our country said "I am announcing that I am running for a fourth term." A declaration of criminal intent so unhinged and so obviously unconstitutional that it is indefensible. And then, this morning, all his cultists started walking that shit back to a safe bailey. "What, you can't even tell jokes at a press dinner anymore?" Yes, Greg, of course you can tell jokes at the press correspondence dinner. But this clearly wasn't one. You can tell, because when the orange pedo tells a joke it's always horrible, usually racist or sexist, and then he explains the punchline to everyone as if we didn't understand it. In this case, you can especially tell he wasn't joking because he said he wasn't joking. He said, and I quote - "This is a scoop. I'm doing this tonight to save some of your careers." And then he said a whole bunch of unhinged, deranged, blatantly criminal bullshit. That's the motte. We agree with the bailey. We sure as fuck don't agree with the motte. And nobody is buying the bullshit you're selling that the motte and the bailey are the same thing.