6 ms·

I suppose we should be grateful that your foolish hyperbole didn't compare IP to the holocaust.

• jlgreco 14y ago
  Do you similarly object to comparisons to "witch hunts" (such as perhaps The Crucible) if people are not actually being crushed or burnt alive?
  • mattdeboard 14y ago
    "witch hunt" has entered into cliche much like "foot of the stairs" or "roof of the mouth"
    • jlgreco 14y ago
      The play The Crucible was not a cliche... The play was an allegory comparing the blacklisting of actors for suspected communist sympathies to the brutal humiliating executions of innocents for the invented crime of consulting with the devil. The fact is that metaphors and allegories do not necessarily suggest the magnitude of compared incident are themselves comparable. Attacking such comparison for having an imbalance of severity is intellectually bankrupt. Reading suggestions of absolute equivalence into them is to not read them as an adult interested in mature conversation; but rather argument.
      • mattdeboard 14y ago
        > The play The Crucible was not a cliche... I didn't say it was. I said the phrase "witch hunt" is a cliche. "The Inquisition" isn't a cliche. "The Salem Witch Trials" isn't a cliche. "The Holocaust" isn't a cliche. "witch hunt" is a cliche.