Michael Brendan Dougherty, We Live in an Upside-Down Age. He begins by citing the “papal oath” that popes swear to upon taking office, which says in part, “I shall neither subtract nor change anything from the tradition my most esteemed predecessors have safeguarded and I have received, nor shall I admit any novelty.” And yet Pope Francis is “non-traditional pope,” who has declared “looking backwards to be a sin.”
That’s just one example of our “upside-down age”:
Nothing quite plays the role you would expect. The Republican Party is supposed to be the party of conservatives — the people of privilege, who are safeguarding the institutions that pass down the cultural and governmental patrimony. But progressives control all those institutions, and Republicans are at war with them.
Liberals are supposed to be the party of the underdog and the common man. They are supposed to assert democracy over the remaining vestiges of aristocracy and oligarchy. Alas, while they maintain — like legacy software — the programs of the New Deal, America’s liberals are obsessed with giving more breaks to the affluent — relief for student loans, paid for by working stiffs. Liberals are supposed to be skeptical of corporate power. Now, liberals trust corporations to censor the common man for his own good. And this trust is absolute. Christian believers never quite trusted their clerics and churches to do censorship. But liberals know that Facebook and Twitter can do it, as long as middle-management types are put in charge!
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