Trump has always been rambling and nearly incoherent. He has always been sensitive to slights, particularly about his rallies/businesses/resorts and prone to distracted ranting defending them. The Washington Post picked Hillary as the clear winner of every debate in 2016. Trump simply does not come across well to educated people in a debate format, and that includes Motte users, even those of us that support him. Despite some users here predicting that Trump had a nontrivial chance of openly calling Kamala a racial slur on national television, that didn't happen. This debate won't change anything and Trump is a known entity.
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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 -
Trump has always been rambling and nearly incoherent. He has always been sensitive to slights, particularly about his rallies/businesses/resorts and prone to distracted ranting defending them. The Washington Post picked Hillary as the clear winner of every debate in 2016. Trump simply does not come across well to educated people in a debate format, and that includes Motte users, even those of us that support him. Despite some users here predicting that Trump had a nontrivial chance of openly calling Kamala a racial slur on national television, that didn't happen. This debate won't change anything and Trump is a known entity.
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