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.
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.
