If you hit a slice shot in tennis, the ball will travel considerably further because the backspin produces circulation which generates lift. If air was a bunch of bullets, the effect wouldn't happen at all. If you raise a spoiler on a Grob's wing, its lift-producing capabilities drop considerably because the spoiler interferes with the circulation. If air was a bunch of bullets, a spoiler wouldn't do anything.
> Air isn't magic fairy dust that pushes on airfoils from a distance.
No. Like I said, it's a fluid that has pressure and velocity everywhere. At low enough Reynolds numbers, like for model gliders, you can even get away with treating it as a non-compressible fluid with decent results.
> Pressure is impact.
And contact between two objects is really about Pauli exclusion surfaces at the atomic level. So what?