Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I wake up every morning now and do a quick systems check.

Gravity? Still working.

Coffee maker? Functional.

Reality? …yeah, no, that one’s been glitching for a while.

Because apparently we’re all just living in the Upside Down now, and no one bothered to tell me when the switch flipped.

Take Ukraine. Remember when getting invaded meant you were… I don’t know… the victim? Cute. Adorable. Very 20th century of us. Now, in certain corners of the media ecosystem, Ukraine is being reframed like it kicked in its own front door and asked for it. “Have we considered,” they say, adjusting their intellectual monocles, “that defending yourself is actually aggressive behavior?”

Right. Of course. Next we’ll be blaming smoke detectors for fires.

And then there’s Iran. The U.S. and Israel conduct strikes, bombs fall, tensions explode—and somehow the narrative boomerangs back to: “Well, Iran is the real aggressor here.” Which is fascinating, because I was under the impression that dropping bombs was generally considered a somewhat aggressive opening statement.

But what do I know? I’m clearly operating under outdated “cause and effect” software.

Meanwhile, the Vatican—you know, that famously radical, fire-breathing institution known for its edgy, revolutionary stance of checks notes “maybe don’t do war?”—decides to say, hey, perhaps bombing entire regions isn’t a great moral strategy. Wild take, I know.

And now we get my favorite subplot in this whole upside-down cinematic universe:

Mike Johnson, self-appointed guardian of all things holy, stepping up to correct… the Pope.

Not just any pope—Pope Francis or, depending on which headline you tripped over that morning, Pope Leo—you know, the guy whose entire job description is “professional interpreter of Christianity.”

And what is the Pope doing to earn this theological fact-check from Capitol Hill? Oh, nothing extreme. Just casually quoting Jesus. You know, the greatest hits: love your neighbor, maybe don’t obliterate entire populations, that kind of fringe material.

But apparently, that’s where Mike Johnson has to step in like, “Actually, Your Holiness, have you tried reading it the other way? The one where ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ comes with a footnote about strategic airstrikes?”

And I’m sorry, but we cannot ignore the absolutely chef’s-kiss detail here: this is the same guy who famously has accountability software set up so he gets alerted if his son ventures too far into the digital wilderness. Not metaphorically. Literally. Somewhere out there is a notification system that goes off like, “WARNING: potential moral deviation—possibly sports cards… possibly something spicier.”

So just to recap the hierarchy in 2026:

The Pope: quoting Jesus, suggesting peace, waving the ancient, dusty concept of “morality.”

Mike Johnson: correcting him, presumably between alert notifications and a quick review of the Book of Modern Political Optics, Chapter 3: When in Doubt, Double Down.

And the response to the Vatican’s pushback on war? Not reflection. Not debate. No, no—we’re now in the era where even the Vatican gets what can only be described as a geopolitical version of “that’s a nice little city-state you’ve got there, shame if something happened to it.”

Because in the Upside Down, consistency is suspicious, restraint is weakness, and quoting Jesus without adding a defense budget is considered naïve at best, subversive at worst.

And I’m sitting here, in my late 50s, remembering a time when words meant things. When “aggressor” wasn’t a rotating title you could assign like Employee of the Month depending on your preferred news channel. When religious authority figures weren’t being theologically mansplained by politicians with Wi-Fi monitoring systems.

Now? Now we’ve got a world where:

The invaded are the aggressors The bombed are the instigators The peacemakers are the troublemakers And the Pope needs a congressional briefing to understand Christianity

And somehow, I’m the crazy one for noticing.

At this point, I half expect my toaster to accuse me of oppression the next time I push the lever down.

Honestly, I’d laugh harder if it didn’t feel like we’re all collectively agreeing to pretend this makes sense. Like we’ve entered some bizarre social contract where pointing out contradictions is ruder than the contradictions themselves.

So yeah—coffee’s hot, gravity still works, and reality is… negotiable.

Welcome to the Upside Down.