re: Ellen goes full Defund the Police

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It was meant to be taken literally, but no remotely sane person would go for that, so they kept the slogan and decided to change the meaning.

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The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions with similar properties, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position. The fallacy has been described as the inverse of the straw man, in "replacing a weak position with a strong position to better defend it" rather than "replacing a strong position with a weak position to better attack it". Nicholas Shackel, who coined the term, prefers to speak of a motte-and-bailey doctrine instead of a fallacy.

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