Quiz-Time!!

Usually we give answers to questions.  You may not like the answers, but oh, well!

This time, we'll give you a quiz, instead.  You may not like the answers, but oh, well!!

WHO wrote this, and WHEN was it written?  

...The feeling that democracy is still not the right form of freedom is fairly general and is steadily becoming more wide-spread…How free are elections? To what extent is the people’s will manipulated by publicity, by the agency of a few people who dominate public opinion? Is there not a new oligarchy of the people who decided what is modern and progressive, what somebody enlightened has to think? How fearsome this oligarchy is, the way they can publicly execute people, is well enough known. Anyone who gets in their way is an enemy of freedom because he is preventing freedom of expression. And what about the way public opinion is shaped in democratically representative councils and committees? Who can still believe that the general good is what really determines their decisions. Who can doubt the power of interests whose dirty hands are being seen more and more often?… In this confusion of forces the problem of society becoming ungovernable is an ever greater threat: the desire for opposing groups for domination blocks the freedom of the whole....

Last question first:  this was written before 2005.  TEN ++ YEARS before the first election of Donald J Trump, fourteen before the second.

Who wrote it?

Cdl. Jos. Ratzinger.

And all this time, you thought he was just another bright theologian with good taste in music who--eventually--was overcome by Vatican intrigues.