This has not been even close to true in my experience. Reviews are usually unsigned, so there's very little social pressure to "let things slide". On the other hand, a non-trivial number of reviewers seem to think the review process is an opportunity to "rough up the competition" instead of an opportunity to offer constructive feedback.
In some cases, peer review works correctly with constructive feedback. In some cases, peer review is abused to "rough up the competition" and slow down the progress of science. In yet more cases, peer review is a blanket pass when the correct actors all align on that paper. There is no way to determine which of these cases apply to any particular paper.
Or put another way, all of these experiences can be true and correct at the same time.
However, I think describing peer review, generally, as "a blanket pass" is going much too far. If anything, I wish it were harder on actual methodological errors while being much, much more permissive of (openly-disclosed) ambiguities in the data or gaps in the theories. Right now, people tend to 'write around' issues in their data, lest a reviewer argue that this invalidates the entire experiment. Looking at papers from the 1980s and 1990s, it's amazing to me how much more frank the authors were.
But you've successfully shown how to "write around" the facts to make your point.
I'll choose to interpret your comment as performance art.. and in that case, you nailed it! Well done.
I'm happy to argue my own points but you misrepresenting them into strawmen isn't productive.