Arguably (and arguably worse) it isn’t that they can’t tell the difference; but that they don’t consider there to be one.
And, if you follow the correct truly-awful-person-please-end-yourself logic, it’s actually a self-consistent position: If you think of ‘terrorism’ as a crime primarily against The Rightful Order of Things, rather than a crime because it tends to involve killing people and blowing up stuff(which is really a position that gets uncomfortably close, just waiting for you to come over and sit down for a drink, the moment you start defining some of your assorted violent criminals as ‘terrorists’ and others as just run-of-the-mill spree killers, largely on underexamined motives of ideological convenience), why wouldn’t other people who threaten The Rightful Order of Things also be considered terrorists by other means?
(This line of thinking sometimes drifts straight into measures designed to curb the potential threat posed by asymmetrical warfare waged by ‘voters’ attempting to influence governments, which is probably best avoided…)
