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I'm of the view that there'd be more productive discussions if we collectively started to use the word "terrorism" in a more nuanced way that allowed for the possibility that not all terrorism is necessarily morally bad.

What got me started thinking this was that there is a character in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 who is open about the fact that she used to be a terrorist — except this was in the context of resisting a brutal occupation of her planet. I have recently been rewatching the show, and it's interesting to see how the narrative frames this as an overall morally good thing whilst also reckoning with the aspects of the resistance that were morally bad. Makes me wistful for that kind of nuance in real world discussions of violent resistance.

It might also make it easier to vehemently condemn senseless acts of state sanctioned terrorism such as this bombing. Though based on the long history of interactional inaction towards multiple genocides, that probably wouldn't make much difference.

I realized that my incompetence-in-communicating probably added this mis-communication:

The inquisitors were Christian, right?

The fact that what they were doing went against everything their root-guru's religion was made-of, doesn't have any bearing, to them.

Nazism is Christian, in identity.

The KKK is Christian, in identity.

Identity has deep roots.

Cambodia's Buddhist.

Has been for centuries.

Yes, I know that Pol Pot was Communist, but when you raise communism in a country as deeply Buddhist as Cambodia, .. you end-up with many of the people in the ruling-regime having "Buddhist" identity, fundamentally in them.

THAT is what I meant:

it was the underlying Buddhist-identity, that I was attacking, and not, in any way, pretending that Pol Pot was claiming Buddhism ( which not-even an idiot would claim ).

You simply can't raise an institution in any culture, without having that-culture being the underlying identity in the people of that regime.

That is why Chinese Buddhism is to me partially an oxy-moron:

Confucianism ( form/tradition/authority/establishment ) is sooo much of the bedrock of the fundamental Chinese mind, and Buddhism is the opposite ( essence, instead-of form, centered ), that the 2 modes of mind are fundamentally mutually-exclusive.

( this doesn't mean that Chinese Chan Buddhism is somehow worthless: it's got some excellent insights for us!

However, if one is working at dissolving-beyond-form, then being fundamentally of the form-and-establishment-and-authority-are-LORD religion that Confucianism is, & I've linked on other sites to a pair of legal-cases which show Confucianism's bedrock instinct..

both in Japan & in China, both Confucian-culture ( Japan's fundamentally more Buddhist & also Shinto ), people have been convicted of murders that they confessed-to, .. and then the person they'd "murdered" returned to town, or was found alive.

In Confucian culture, authority is the LORD.

Authority beating people into confessing is "valid" ( and cost authority some "face" in those cases, when accountability came knocking ), for authority to do.

In OUR culture due-process is more real, in Confucian culture .. it inherently isn't.

Same with truly-Buddhist cultures, like Cambodia.

Any truly-Buddhist culture which is temporarily ( for a few generations ) highjacked by some physicalist/materialist ideology .. the underlying identites of the people staffing the regime is going to remain rooted in the underlying-culture, isn't it?

That goes all ways, not just to the traditional-religions, it goes to moneyarchy, it goes to legalism-archy, it goes to physicalism's religion, it goes to fundamentalist-atheism, it goes to all axiom-based, system-of-meaning that rejects falsification

( which is my definition of "religion" ).

You can't instantly get the underlying identity out, no matter how you change the apparent identity: it takes generations to do that.

( the Soviet Union lasted long-enough to change the fundamental-underlying-identity in people, not completely, but significantly )

So, you've proven I'm incompetent at communicating:

I meant underlying identity, underneath the party-affiliation or otherwise "flag carrying" "identity",

but I appeared to mean something fundamentally-different.

Typical..

My inability to think the way proper, acceptable, valid, western-minds think, keeps creating miscommunications & problems.

That isn't likely to cease, as long as I continue earning more-complete understanding, instead of remanufacturing me to make me be acceptably-conforming/"belonging"/etc.

That underlying-level & surface-level both affect outcomes, is to me sooo obvious as to be automatically-assumed.

Normals don't assume any such thing.

Incompetence-at-communicating can have many causes.

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