The Weekly Screed (#683)

Oink
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — Thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent anti-contraception decision, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which enshrines in American Constitutional law the novel notion that corporations are not only persons but they’re also, well… holy, we finally have a literary parallel for Chief Justice John Roberts.

Many decisions of this conservative Court have been described as “Orwellian,” but these tend to be references to George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. When I read about Hobby Lobby, however, the first literary line that came to my mind was the mantra of Comrade Napoleon, the chief pig in Orwell’s other classic, Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

In Hobby Lobby, the Roberts Court tilted the equality scales by swaddling corporate chiefs — already almost impregnable to any challenge from employees, the public or even the federal government — in the purple vestments of “religious liberty.” They conceded that Hobby Lobby owner David Green is no mere businessman. He is exalted above his corporate peers by a fierce and steely faith — one that he’s willing to blow millions of dollars in legal fees to uphold and propagate. Green — the Supreme Court found — is a remarkable capitalist cleric who blends free-market dogma with Christian liturgy, guiding his flock of meek employees toward a paternal paradise where personal autonomy is joyfully surrendered to the biggest pig in the barnyard.

To put it in Green’s words: “We believe wholeheartedly that it is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has been successful.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I hear in Reverend Green an echo of Orwell's Napoleon, oinking to the chickens, lambs and other less equal animals why the best victuals in the trough are reserved to the ruling pigs: “Comrades! You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege?… We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.”

In another eerie parallel, the pigs of Animal Farm — like Rev. Dave at Hobby Lobby — laid an intimidating religious gloss over their loving tyranny, issuing the Seven Commandments of the church of “animalism.” Among these, my favorite is the First: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.”

Obviously, Comrade Napoleon never got a load of Cyd Charisse.

But I digress.

In earlier decisions — including Citizens United — Chief Justice Roberts, along with accomplices Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Stepin Fetchit, re-wrote the Constitution spectacularly by granting personhood to corporations. They did so despite the sentiments of their conservative hero, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.”

I think Roberts guessed that Jefferson wasn’t alone in despising corporations. He saw a need to shield them — despite their personhood — from any vestige of civic responsibility. Seizing his chance in Hobby Lobby, he conjured a species of religious immunity, transforming bosses, bankers and plutocrats from mere grasping profiteers into prophets, vicars, cardinals, patriarchs, rabbis, messiahs.

The queue of corporate aristocrats seeking this ecclesiastic dispensation from the laws of the land, like the pigs in Animal Farm who claimed first dibs on the best slop in the trough, is already forming — and getting friendly hearings from the Court’s majority.

Perhaps the real miracle of the Hobby Lobby decision is how cleverly it resolves the paradox posed by Matthew 6:24, when Jesus (allegedly) said: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

A dilemma for Justice Roberts? Hardly. Roberts coolly overruled the Lord’s objection and topped himself by squelching that really inconvenient passage in Mark: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

You see, John Roberts’ ace-in-the-hole, which he probably carries in his wallet, is Psalm 112, where God himself says: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments. His descendants will be mighty in the land… Wealth and riches are in his house…”

In other words, David Green.

Given a choice between New Testament and Old, between God and the Son of God, all things being equal — but some animals more equal than others — Justice Roberts and the Four Pharisees found for the pigs.

Head hog Napoleon in fiction and head judge Roberts in reality both possess a keen appreciation of what happens when you sanctify power. They know how the force of popular faith can confound opposition to the rule of a tyrant few. Jefferson got it, too. “Compulsion in religion,” he wrote, “is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing.”

If you oppose President Obama, for example, you’re only dissing a temporary secular leader, a political hack. But now, since Rev. Roberts tacked his ninety-five theses onto the doors of the Supreme Court and Hobby Lobby ordained every CEO in the USA into the new United Church of God and Mammon, you’re not just poor-mouthing David Green, Donald Trump or Charlie Koch anymore.

You’re pounding nails into Jesus.