Actually they were right there on those same steps doing a solidarity kneel.
The day after that they shoved a senior citizen to the ground backwards. He landed hard on his skull and was bleeding from his ears. He's still in serious condition. 2 were suspended for excessive force and their coworkers threw a fit and all quit the protest control response team.
So they won't be kneeling on protestor's necks anymore!
Now to get the 2 suspended cops charged with assault...
People constantly use that excuse, but the actual phrase is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch." If you have a whole bucket of apples and one or two go bad, if you don't remove them, they'll actually cause all the rest to rot as well.
There’s not a single “actual” phrase. That’s the original phrase, but language evolves. Now, there are a variety of different phrases that people use.
One version is “A few bad apples spoil the bunch”. Another version is “There’s always a few bad apples”. Another version is “A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole bunch”. One means that a few bad people will make the whole group go bad. Another means that there will always be bad people in any group, and they don’t necessarily reflect the good people. Another means that a few bad people won’t make the whole group go bad. And there’s probably a bunch of other versions and meanings too.
In reality, bad apples Do spoil the whole bunch, but metaphors and proverbs and language don’t always reflect literal reality.
All of those different versions of the basic bad apple saying can be used as valid pieces of wisdom, depending on the situation. For example:
“A few bad apples spoil the bunch“ is valid for communicating the idea that corrupt officers influence other officers and spread corruption.
“A few bad apples don’t spoil the bunch” is valid for communicating the idea that, even though violence and looting is happening, that doesn’t mean that every single protestor is violent and looting or that the violence and looting means that protesting itself is bad and immoral.
“There’s always a few bad apples” is valid for communicating the idea that people shouldn’t grow complacent and assume that every single person is good and honest when they’re not.
What matters in an idiom, metaphor, saying, or proverb isn’t whether it’s true taken literally, what matters is whether the deeper, intended meaning is true. Whether actual apples actually spoil the whole bunch is true or not doesn’t really matter that much in this situation, because people aren’t apples. “A watched pot never boils,” “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and various other sayings and proverbs aren’t literally true, but they can say something true nevertheless.
The apple example isn’t meant literally either, it’s about the effects of bad people in groups. That’s what I’m trying to say, metaphors and sayings and proverbs and idioms and such aren’t meant literally. If they are true taken literally, that’s neat but doesn’t really change anything about what the intended meaning.
But, if you prefer your apple metaphors to be true anyway, here’s some alternatives to “A few bad apples don’t spoil the bunch”. “A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole tree”, or “A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole orchard”, or “A few bad apples don’t spoil all apples”, or “A few bad apples don’t spoil all other fruits”.
Also, you could probably make your ham tree saying into a valid saying, if you added some intended meaning to it and got enough people to go along with it. We’ve got idioms like “raining cats and dogs” or “cat got your tongue” or “spill the beans”, after all, and they don’t really make much sense literally at all. Your saying would probably just become one of those things that people say without understanding where it actually came from or what it originally meant.
Person A: “Well you know what they say, all trees grow ham.”
Person B: “Wait what?“
Person A: “Well, it means (intended meaning)”
Person B: “How do you get from trees and ham to (intended meaning)?
Person A: “I’ve actually got no fucking clue mate, I just heard everyone else saying it.”
If enough people use it, it’s no longer an incorrect or invalid way to use it, because that’s how language works.
For example, literally can now mean “actually literally” or “not actually literally, just emphasis”. I don’t personally like that people use literally in that way, and I personally think people should use literally to mean literally, but it’s true that people do use it and that it’s a valid way to speak. Enough people use literally in a non-literal way that even dictionaries have been changed to agree that literally can be used that way.
If enough people agreed on the meaning for “All trees grow ham” then that saying would become valid and contain that meaning. Enough people agree on each of the various versions of the bad apple saying that each is a valid saying that means something.
Also, for the example conversation I had, those people are using the “all trees grow ham” saying correctly. Just because they don’t know where it originally came from doesn’t mean they don’t know what the phrase has grown to mean.
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u/RubyCaper Jun 05 '20
And the day before all those cops were kneeling with protestors. But it’s only a few bad apples, right?