That or it's the status totem pole rearing up again, super blues may not be afraid of having red assiciation rub off on them, while nominally blues are. Super high class can adopt low class dress and manners with less risk of being seen as low class, in many ways someone just rising out of the low class can't.
If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
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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 -
That or it's the status totem pole rearing up again, super blues may not be afraid of having red assiciation rub off on them, while nominally blues are. Super high class can adopt low class dress and manners with less risk of being seen as low class, in many ways someone just rising out of the low class can't.
If you ever click through the profiles of the most obnoxiously progressive and ideologically rigid Redditors, you'll often find they are "lumpen-intelligentsia" of a sort--mostly people from small, irrelevant cities (nothing wrong with this!) who seem to be trying to emulate big-city liberals who read the New York Times. Actual big-city progressives don't seem to spend nearly as much time trying to prove their blue tribe bona fides on Reddit, they're busy in graduate school or at a climbing gym.
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