Maybe the stakes are bigger than we realize
If anyone thought the 2016 revolt against the institutions was transient recent events may force a reconsideration. Instead of dying down open political war now permanently grips Washington. Abroad, time has healed no wounds; immigration issues have not dissipated in Europe, on the contrary riots are rocking Germany The British are still rushing bald-headed toward Brexit with all the incalculable consequences that entails. What can't be happening is.
According to sources quoted by the NYT "ideological agendas" have spread to the Catholic Church. After the Vatican's ex-ambassador to Washington Archbishop Carlo Vigano claimed a gay and left wing mafia had been protecting sex abusers within the Church and naming Pope Francis as the Left's man an issue was reliably anti-clerical suddenly turned into conspiracy story. Jason Horowitz in the NYT concluded that politics must be behind Vigano's allegations.
…
Politics, as Ross Douthat notes, explains "why certain organs and apostles of liberal Catholicism are running interference for [alleged abuser] McCarrick’s protectors — because Francis is their pope, the liberalizer they yearned for all through the John Paul and Benedict years." But can "politics" or even "ideological agendas" explain why the culture wars raging raging across the world look so similar.
Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Robert Barron has a theory. He suggests that the Church -- and perhaps the world at large -- is struggling not just against a few disorganized human beings but something more powerful: an evolving, self-programming, viral "demonic element" that is almost impossible to destroy.
…
Lest one think Barron a metaphysical nut, his notion of the devil closely resembles the social media concept of the 'meme', a word coined by Richard Dawkins' in the 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation and replication ... [like] melodies, fashions and learned skills [that] generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior."
…
Yet what should have been unstoppable wasn't. The big mystery continues to be why an all-conquering meme suddenly found itself thrown back by ideas of almost equal force with no obvious origin. An opinion article in the NYT by Paul Krugman acknowledges the existence and power but not the provenance of this sudden counterforce. Worse, Krugman warns the left might actually lose to this mysterious power.
…
Krugman uses the term "white nationalism" (AKA Nazism) not because it has explanatory power, but because like Bishop Barron he needs a word for his nameless foe. The developers in Silicon Valley were not so easily frightened and having launched memes themselves confidently undertook to tame it. Working on the hypothesis that the liberal project was temporarily stymied by a random rogue fad, the social media companies took energetic steps to both contain it and prevent it from going viral.
This was accomplished by suspending accounts, censoring "hate speech" and algorithmically shadow banning ideas whose replication they wanted to prevent. This would theoretically limit the hostile ideas to a backwater where they would stagnate, wither and die. Theoretically.
…
When the totality of cultural warfare and revolution now raging throughout the world is summed we may be watching an event bigger than the fall of the Soviet Union. The event doesn't have a name yet, on the day we finally understand, it will. But understanding may prove the most difficult part.