Le Chaud Lapin writes:

Obviously, any air above the wing can only result in a force downward
on top of the wing. The only force causing the plane to want to move
upward comes from beneath the wing. The effect of any air above the
wing is to cause rarefication above the wing, resulting in lower
pressure, thereby giving the 14.7lbs/in^2 (plus) to do its work. That
"reaction" coming from downward movement of air seems just plain silly
to me.

Lift is a reaction to the force required to push air downward behind the wing
(downwash). How the air gets pushed downward is not very important. The wing
twists air into a downwash as it passes through it, leaving a swath of air
moving gently downward behind it. The force required to do this engenders an
equal and opposite force that is lift. Lift accelerates the wing upward,
counteracting gravity. The wing accelerates a large mass of air downward.

I am also inclined to take issue with the explanations of Bernouilli's
Principle which I see often in the literature, but that's a different
subject. [Note, I don't doubt Bernouilli's Principle, I just think
there is more to it than the way it is being described in context of
flying.]

There are a lot of different ways to examine and describe the aerodynamics of
lift. It boils down to accelerating one mass (a mass of air) downward, which
engenders another acceleration of another mass (the wing, and anything to
which it is attached) upward. Any flat surface moving relative to the air
with a positive angle of attack below the stall angle will generate lift.