For at least the last four decades now I feel like I’ve been living in Beached America: a nation that has lost its values, even as it writhes in violent agitation, inflicting its military on the vulnerable regions of the planet.

It does so in the name of those lost values . . . democracy, freedom, equality. These are just dead words at this point, public relations blather, silently followed by a sigh: yada, yada, yada. Then we send in the drones.

This is the behavior of a nation that is spiritually beached. Ideas that could open up the future have long been gagged, mocked and marginalized, locked in a closet somewhere. No way can they be allowed to have political influence. Thanks, mainstream media.

Your new movie, Where to Invade Next, is very powerful, your best so far for certain.

Get well.

Fast.

We need you.

You've packed a great many issues into this film, with visuals, with personalities, with entertainment. If people will watch this, they'll learn what many of us have struggled to tell them and more, as there was plenty that I learned as well.

I must assume that when U.S. audiences watch scenes that dramatically clash with their world yet seem humane and reasonable they'll be brought to the point of thinking.

Maybe if we declared “war” on poison water, we’d find a way to invest money in its “defeat.”

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, writing at Tom Dispatch this week about what they called “The United States of Flint,” make this point: “The price tag for replacing the lead pipes that contaminated its drinking water, thanks to the corrosive toxins found in the Flint River, is now estimated at up to $1.5 billion. No one knows where that money will come from or when it will arrive. In the meantime, the cost to the children of Flint has been and will be incalculable.”

I sit with these words: “No one knows where the money will come from.”

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Human Rights Watch, political analysts and others
are criticizing President Obama for inviting Bangkok's coup leader to
an ASEAN summit in California on February 15 amid expectations the
junta will display it as U.S. endorsement of the military regime.

Indicative of that support, the Pentagon will simultaneously train the
junta's troops for 11 days here in Thailand during February to ensure
"stability within the region."

All 10 leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- which
includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- received invitations
to the February 15-16 U.S.-ASEAN Summit at Sunnylands in Rancho
Mirage, California.

Most of the leaders arrived alongside Prime Minister Prayuth
Chan-ocha, who seized power in a bloodless May 2014 coup.

"We advised the White House to rescind invitations to Prime Minister
Prayuth and [Cambodian] Prime Minister Hun Sen," said Human Rights