I’m so tired of forced analogies. They give people a false feeling of understanding the situation while clarifying nothing at all.
“This is just like Hitler!”
“This is just like Mussolini!”
And today even a truly bizarre “Trump is just like Savonarola and this is just like the Renaissance!” in the NY TIMES.
Why not say “everything is just like everything else!” already and be done with it?
These historical analogies are supposed to be informative, but I’m not sure how informative or frightening they are if people barely know history.
There’s a whole variety of historical horrors you can claim as analogous situations!
And today even a truly bizarre “Trump is just like Savonarola and this is just like the Renaissance!” in the NY TIMES.
I’m afraid to read this extended metaphor to see how badly the author botches it. Of course my knowledge of Savonarola is limited to skimming historical fiction, pop historical books (aka not monographs, but biographies with citations), Wikipedia, and television shows.
I’m pretty sure Savonarola didn’t have several trophy wives, children, or huge tracts of land though.
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Yeah, I see zero similarity between Trump and Savonarola, and the author’s “they were both the voice of the people” sounds silly.
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My favorite: Relating current events news in terms of Game of Thrones. Even by the abysmal levels of journalism today, this is some hacky shit.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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