You’re not a blockhead so much as many of us traditional Catholics are cynics. I go to the Novus Ordo Mass five or six days a week. I usually attend a diocesan Extraordinary Form Mass on Sundays. That doesn’t make me a “rad trad.” But even run of the mill trad Catholics faithful to Rome and the Magisterium find this Pope to be at best puzzling and imprudent. Many find him to be exasperating and some think he is a heretic.
Meanwhile the mainstream Catholic apologetics are doing mental and verbal gymnastics trying to explain away what is terribly clear: we’ve got a Pope who doesn’t care to speak or defend orthodoxy and ortho praxis. That is troubling and most don’t know how to deal with it.
The easiest thing to do is ignore him and hope for an orthodox replacement in God’s good time.
I am 4 1/2 hours from the nearest Extraordinary Mass and have never been privileged to even see one in my 13 years, since my late conversion.
I tried the mental and verbal gymnastics you mentioned for awhile out of duty, hope and charity, otherwise known as flying on “a wing and a prayer”, but I have been given nothing that I recognise to work with.
“In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped: I shall not be confounded forever.”
So, I here I sit, baffled. I too am a traditional Catholic