Basically a straight up admition that they’re both meaningless though terminating cliches

Another straw man. You guys are on a roll.

What is cliché is resorting to strawman arguments and whataboutism/bothsidesism when your dogmatic incantations don't win the day. They are the refuge of the weak. Attempting to devalue the ideas is a transparent effort to reduce the impact of your weakness being labelled, It's the same as white supremacists loudly calling out Godwin's Law when they are rightly labelled as Nazis or Zionists labelling legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel antisematism. Mike Godwin himself said, "By all means, compare these assholes to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you."