> I would press ESC repeatedly in Emacs, three of which are enough close a window.
You can configure every combination of keystrokes in Emacs - just bind M-ESC ESC to something harmless (such as, e.g., not function at all).
One possibility would be the following line in your ~/.emacs file:
(global-set-key (kbd "M-ESC ESC") 'keyboard-quit)
Thank you for mentioning this. I do have something similar...
Is this kind of comment not just a tautological rebuttal to any criticism of emacs
No.