IMO, what Eileen is doing is what every didactic thinker does - they look around for patterns, for similarities, for the bigger picture that has relevance to another issue. Without this style of thinking out loud, we would probably be barely emerging from the Middle Ages.

If you see no relevance, that does not mean there isn't any... it just means you see things a certain way and it may not be your style to look at something through the diffractions of another idea or even of the "zeitgeist" that currently obtains.

It's not for everybody. Some people are number crunchers, and others are POETs. Both are needed to progress humanity.