It’s a comparison just a comparison it’s really nothing else.
A specific necessity of a metaphor is that the two are not something you should be able to compare. Like time and apples. It isn’t a metaphor if you compare something similar especially if you’re trying to make the argument that the two things you’re comparing are similar, that’s specifically like the opposite of a metaphor
Read the last part of that guy’s sentence tho it’s specifically to take them OUT of the conflict. That would do the opposite