Our era of super-low-information debate, made possible by the Internet, doesn’t allow for much subtlety. One result of this is that it’s very common for people to get all bent out of shape about what they think of or tendentiously construe as “comparisons.”

You know what I’m talking about. You mention something that two things or events or people have common — usually some incidental particular or minute aspect — and you’re suddenly accused of “comparing” the two things, which in this context is actually (again, incorrectly) defined as “asserting that two things are more or less the same.”