Wholeheartedly agree. I want to credit the GP one way, which is that the category they're identifying is real, namely of frivolous or circular comparisons. This just isn't one of those. It's a turn of phrase that's emphatic about the felt quality of qualitative experience. And in I think it's quite a good one, because in English it has just the right amount of cross-sections of connotation that it brings out this being felt quality that everyone reading it seems to understand. The idea has been around but this expression of it has gained the most traction in English.

As for whether I agree with Nagle, I find him consistently just wrong enough to be irritating in ways that I want to work out my thoughts in response to, which by some standards can be counted as a compliment. As much as I understand the turn of phrase and its ability to get people to grasp the idea, and I at least respect it for that reason, I kind of sort of always have the impression that this is what everyone meant the entire time and wouldn't have thought a whole essay emphasizing the point was necessary.