You are summarizing, with near perfect accuracy, the motte and bailey.
“Defund the police” actually does mean “defund the police”, and this despite attempts to dress it up as the more reasonable position that is incidentally held by a significant portion of the American public.
Even if we want to play fast and loose with semantics and interpretation, that particular formulation is chosen because it reflects an extreme position. It is a phrase that conveys (in the most general and imprecise terms) the sentiment of “I support the radical solution”. By construction, it points to a set of beliefs held by radical minority.
The motte and bailey consists in both (1) focusing on the slight differences in opinion between radicals and (2) focusing on the reasonable beliefs that the average person might share with radicals, while ignoring the unreasonable ones that are not shared. Thankfully, most people see through this, if only on a gut level.
The confusion is not accidental; it is intentional.
You are, at best, repeating a dog-whistle of a slogan. At worse, you are playing semantic games. In all cases, I would encourage you — under the charitable assumption that you are not an extremist — to prefer a turn of phrase that more precisely conveys your actual beliefs, rather than one that aims to confuse the issue and radicalize thought. As a bonus, it’ll elevate the level of discourse and make for an interesting discussion.
> You are summarizing, with near perfect accuracy, the motte and bailey.
Certainly not; there is an enormous difference between "I am saying one thing but my secret plan is another thing" and "using a bad slogan that's easily misinterpreted".
I don't like this whole "motte and bailey" kind of stuff in the first place; it's guessing at people's motivations and poison for reasonable constructive solutions or compromises. If everyone keeps guessing at people's motivation and what's in their heart of hearts we'll never get anywhere with anything.
> You are, at best, repeating a dog-whistle of a slogan
I'm not "repeating" it; I'm saying it's a bad slogan, but also adding some nuance because sure, here are some people who mean it literally, but for many others it's "just" a phrase. I wish people would stop using it, yes, but I'm also not going to dismiss the entire argument or movement just because they're using a bad slogan.
What they are summarizing isn't a motte and bailey. The logical fallacy is, rather, that you can immediately dismiss anybody who warmly references the "defund" slogan, by attributing to them all the weirdest things defund true-believers say. No, you cannot. There are no cheat codes in these discussions.
“Defund the police” actually does mean “defund the police”, and this despite attempts to dress it up as the more reasonable position that is incidentally held by a significant portion of the American public.
Even if we want to play fast and loose with semantics and interpretation, that particular formulation is chosen because it reflects an extreme position. It is a phrase that conveys (in the most general and imprecise terms) the sentiment of “I support the radical solution”. By construction, it points to a set of beliefs held by radical minority.
The motte and bailey consists in both (1) focusing on the slight differences in opinion between radicals and (2) focusing on the reasonable beliefs that the average person might share with radicals, while ignoring the unreasonable ones that are not shared. Thankfully, most people see through this, if only on a gut level.
The confusion is not accidental; it is intentional.
You are, at best, repeating a dog-whistle of a slogan. At worse, you are playing semantic games. In all cases, I would encourage you — under the charitable assumption that you are not an extremist — to prefer a turn of phrase that more precisely conveys your actual beliefs, rather than one that aims to confuse the issue and radicalize thought. As a bonus, it’ll elevate the level of discourse and make for an interesting discussion.