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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   2958 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is an American, in your book?

What is an American, in your book?

Legal category (comprising about 340M by now, about 4.1% of humanity).

If you have paper issued by proper authority following proper procedure that says you are an American, you are one.

Make it anything else, and you open door you really do not want to be opened (no matter how personally strong and tough you are and how many guns do you own).

No, those are citizens of the United States of America. USians (derogatory), not Americans.

Americans are a distinct people, a distinct ethnicity, and a coherent nation of people who share language and ancestry.

To ourselves and out posterity, and Araujo isn't included in that.

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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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