I never understood why that phrase was ever used as if it were an excuse.
A thought-terminating cliche is a rhetorical device intended to end a discussion without actually resolving it. The idea is to say something that the other party more or less has to agree to without regard to whether it actually has any bearing on the discussion at hand, and then refuse to discuss further. This makes it seem like the discussion is over and, as the last person who scored a point, you’ve won. “It’s just a few bad apples” is one. “Let’s agree to disagree” is another. Trump almost singlehandedly invented one in the phrase “fake news”, which is ostensibly intended to mean “I don’t trust the source of that information” but is often used in an infinite regression where everything unfriendly to the arguer is fake news. It’s basically a deus ex machina for arguments; a way to escape a corner you’ve been backed into without ever admitting that you were wrong about anything.
does your wife’s friend know how the phrase “a few bad apples” ends?
Well if she didn’t before, me replying with the entire phrase every time she says “bad apple” in reference to cops informed her.
I never understood why that phrase was ever used as if it were an excuse.
A thought-terminating cliche is a rhetorical device intended to end a discussion without actually resolving it. The idea is to say something that the other party more or less has to agree to without regard to whether it actually has any bearing on the discussion at hand, and then refuse to discuss further. This makes it seem like the discussion is over and, as the last person who scored a point, you’ve won. “It’s just a few bad apples” is one. “Let’s agree to disagree” is another. Trump almost singlehandedly invented one in the phrase “fake news”, which is ostensibly intended to mean “I don’t trust the source of that information” but is often used in an infinite regression where everything unfriendly to the arguer is fake news. It’s basically a deus ex machina for arguments; a way to escape a corner you’ve been backed into without ever admitting that you were wrong about anything.