> Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the incident as a "terrorist attack" but FBI special agent Alethea Duncan later said it is "not a terrorist event", instead saying there have been "improvised explosive devices" found in the area.
Running over people and having improvised explosive devices is not a terrorist event?
The classic example is Nidal Hassan, whom Obama never described as a terrorist. The Department of Defense formally classified the Fort Hood massacre as "workplace violence"!
A number of crimes are by their very nature political—terrorism, assassinations, etc.
Dylann Roof and Anderson Lee Aldrich were not charged with terrorism. Luigi Mangione was. How does your grammar National Socialist mode distinguish between them?
Though I'd like to believe that in this case, at least early on in the investigation, the feds have contradicted the mayor only to make this distinction before they can say it without guessing - once you call someone a terrorist in an official communication, it's hard to take it back.
> "The ordinary current use of the word terrorism is much too wide. That is to say, if we list all the different phenomena which are at one time or another described as terrorism in ordinary conversation, or in ordinary newspapers, or by ordinary politicians, we will end up with a huge rag-bag of not very similar items . . The disadvantages of trying to construct an ordinary-language definition based on current usage can be seen, too, in the plethora of conflicting definitions occurring in philosophical and political literature. Thus philosophers for instance disagree about whether or not terrorism is wrong by definition or wrong just as a matter of fact; they disagree about whether terrorism should be defined in terms of its aims, or its methods, or both, or neither; they disagree about whether or not states can perpetrate terrorism; they even disagree about the importance or otherwise of terror for a definition of terrorism."
If you're going to be pick at nits, you need to be aware of the nits.
Violence used to extort money from a person/group of people is not generally considered terrorism, but your definition says it would be.
Violence against combatants is not generally considered terrorism, but your definition says it would be.
Have a sleep, and read your response once again tomorrow - if you don't find it ridiculous, flaming for the 3rd definition of the word just for the sake of a pointless "akchyually" comment, then I give you victory, hands down. Otherwise, just have a laugh, and carry on with your life. I will do carry on myself after posting this.
Offtopic: in a previous life as a CSR, decades ago, a customer at work was complaining to us about someone (from very east EU, maybe even Russia? definitely not native speaker) using the word "bro" in a casual, but innocent sentence, and he felt so extremely insulted, he went on literally for hours, demanding the person to be reprimanded... and we had no idea what he was talking about, until we found it on the 11th page of Urban Dictionary that "bro" has a 285th meaning in some random village, which is pejorative under some circumstances - and that's what he was complaining about.
It just came to my mind, don't mind it.
Happy new year!
A Wikipeda entry which starts, by the way, with: "Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims." showing that combatants and monetary aims are outside at least its broadest definition.
Someone claiming to be in "grammar nazi mode" should be wary of claiming something else is 'pointless "akchyually".'