Standing Freedom on Its Head: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Supremes' Defense of Citizens United

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on the recent Supreme Court defense of "free speech" [by corporations, which are people, too] when the Supremes announced they won't reconsider Citizens United: 

It’s one big joke. Big enough to make you cry. Three things don’t go together: Money. Secrecy. Democracy. That’s the nub of the matter. This is all a sham for invalidating democracy in the name of democracy. It’s the trick authoritarians always use to hide their real intentions, which in this case is absolute power over our public life and institutions: the privatization of everything.

As Moyers and Winship point out, the name of this game is to invalidate the free speech of the entire citizenry by subverting the democratic process--while claiming that this is all being done as an exercise in protecting freedom of speech!

For corporations, you understand.  Because they're people, too.

And so the Deep Pockets blather on and on about their need to defend [their own] free speech--by being permitted to buy elections with behind-the-scenes donations whose source and amount are never revealed.  Because they claim that letting the American public know who's giving how much to whom will tamp down the "free speech" of the Deep Pockets buying the elections.  

Since people will intimidate said Deep Pockets if they know who's donating how much to whom.

I agree with Moyers and Winship: makes you want to cry.  If nothing else, the cynical use of terms like "freedom" to mean precisely the opposite of what the terms patently mean is disturbing in the extreme.

And it's precisely the tactic the top leaders of the Catholic church have been using since they began ramping up their "freedom of religion" campaign around the start of 2011, with papal comments about this matter beginning a meme that the U.S. bishops have sought to put to adroit use with their current little "freedom of religion" war.

It's almost as if the top leaders of the Catholic church have taken a leaf right out of the cynical Orwellian make-black-mean-white playbook of the Deep Pockets, as the Catholic hierarchy claims it's defending freedom when it wants to deny freedom to folks who approve contraceptive use, or to gay and lesbian human beings.

It's almost as if the top leaders of the Catholic church are right inside those Deep Pockets, isn't it?

P.S. (later in the day): and as I catch up on email, I suddenly discover that Alan McCornick of the wonderful Hepzibah blog had sent me a link to this very same article in video format at Bill Moyers's website.  Even more impressive hearing him make the statement in person . . . .