Priests of a Medieval Church
Many people have noted the remarkable moment this weekend in which Jake Tapper, sitting maskless near Amy Klobuchar, denounced Ted Cruz for being so cruel and irresponsible as to sit maskless near Amy Klobuchar:
Some of the people who’ve commented on this moment have called Tapper a hypocrite, which misses the point entirely. Tapper is a bishop in a medieval church; his role is to perform ritual, and to condemn the heresies of those who fail to perform the rituals. The event at which Cruz sat maskless near Klobuchar, a memorial service for a dead politician, was a ceremony, a ritual event, a rite of the church. An interview on television isn’t a rite of the church, but rather an event in which ritual performance is rehearsed and evaluated. So Cruz failed to perform ritual at a ritual event, while Tapper correctly chose not to perform ritual acts at an event that was not a ceremony, and therefore didn’t require ritual performance. He was doctrinally consistent. He paid correct obeisance to the ceremonial forms. This is also correct ritual performance, consistent with the doctrine of the Church of the Ruling Class:
The endless examples of maskless politicians hanging out, laughing and joking while standing close together, and then scrambling to put on masks as they get the word that a television camera is about to be switched on….
….are also doctrinally consistent. They’re performing a ritual act, are trained and ordained in the performance, and are correctly transitioning from time outside ritual to time inside ritual. Priests don’t pour their morning cereal into a bowl in ceremonial vestments; they put the vestments on before Mass. This is what a celebration of a faith looks like, and it’s not hypocritical at all. The transition into moments of ritual performance speaks to the degree to which the people of the church respect the faith, and appreciate the degree to which their place in the church gives their lives status and structure.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity.
For those of us outside the Church of the Ruling Class, recognizing that these moments of ritual performance aren’t meant to have practical substance — that the mask is a social signal, not a device for controlling the transmission of a virus — is a key to our response. If this is your faith, you’re compelled to join the ceremony; if it’s not, you don’t have to go inside for the Mass of the Masks. Ignore them and drive on.