Because of Western Rome and Catholicism, I think Eastern Europe and Russia weren't part of the West. Aren't they?

Correct. The division goes back to the Roman Empire and the reforms of Diocletian. Arguably however there were underlying cultural differences between the Latin Romans and the Greek Romans that were beneath those reforms and the later Great Schism between East and West.

Yes I understand. Yet it in another sense remains geographically inaccurate or contradictory, and amusingly so.

It's my personal opinion that when we see such a discongreguity that we should perhaps choose other words.

Words are never some sort of perfect encapsulation of their meaning. They only achieve that via their definitions.

What you're suggesting is basically using the etymological fallacy as a basis for changing words. Because of linguistic drift, a majority of words would have up be changed at some point - words like "nice" which came to mean their opposite, for example.

I think my suggestion that we should "perhaps" choose different words occasionally was mistaken for a demand that we must.

Choice of words is an individalized thing and language allows us to be as flexible as we like within still getting the point across. If I choose to say "European" instead of "western" when contrasting with indigenous Americans that sounds fine to me. If you don't make that same choice that's fine too. We'll all be understood.

>It's my personal opinion that when we see such a discongreguity that we should perhaps choose other words.

Not really. Then we'd be changing terms established for centuries, that most people understand in their two contexts (geographical and cultural), with some new words we'd have to explain every time we use them -- so making things worse.

If I contrasted indigenous Americans with "European" culture rather than a "western" one, you would completely understand the meaning and it wouldn't be a big deal.

Not exactly.

I wouldn't know if you mean "European culture" in the sense of something unique continental European (the way Europeans have unique cultural traits different from US traits, e.g. analytical vs continental philosophy), or the shared western culture Europeans and US Americans, and Australians, etc have?

That would sound to me like a deliberate misread in the same way that taking "west" literally is to you. You would know what I meant to say, and so would I should you say it the other way.

>You would know what I meant to say

Not really, only with extra context/explanation.

It's common to divide US/European culture (even though both western), or to include Japan in the western culture (even though not in the west, and their culture is not European of origin -- west in that sense is more like "westernized").