I was thinking. The America we grew up in won’t survive the next few years. The broad destruction of the federal government, the gross theft of public resources, the broad dismissal of expertise and experience, the greed, the disdain for law, the self-serving quality of the little man, his sycophants and fellow Republicans and, most significantly, the rage and naivete of their voters and the entitlement and irresponsibility of the ninety million people who didn’t vote. The people we elected are in way over their heads and the results of their incompetence and greed are going to be horrific.

When, in several years, we look around at our failed state and what’s left of our planet, we will be ready for a new American ethos, one that isn’t promoted by our oligarchs, our industries, our military, our technologies or the Kardashians; I propose that our new ethos be that of Universal Wellbeing, a national guarantee of food, housing, medical care, education, safety, and contemplation for every American (by “contemplation,” I mean the time and opportunity to pursue a spirituality); an America that takes pride in the wellbeing of its citizenry and is offended and embarrassed by a citizen deprived.

Merriam-Webster defines freedom as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” We Americans talk about it as though it’s unique to us, as though citizens of Denmark, South Korea, Australia, England, Japan, Norway, France, Canada, and a whole bunch of other countries spend their lives in chains. They don’t. But the poor in America, our fellow citizens, do. Our fellow Americans struggle for food, housing, medical care, education and physical safety. We need to redefine those things as necessities, as the foundational rights of every citizen. Without them, by definition, our fellow Americans are not free; because poverty places constraints on choice and action. Today, forty million American men, women and children are living without freedom. That number is growing and will continue to grow.

I envision an America that takes offense at poverty and takes responsibility for it; an America that recognizes that poverty is a danger to all of society, a waste of human talent, and a waste of money spent in response to the effects of hunger, lack of housing, lack of medical care and all the rest. America needs to treat lack of wellbeing like a house fire: trained professionals show up, put out the fire and treat the injured, and that help is paid for and is the responsibility of the state, of all of us. Our future success as a society and as a country, if it is ever to occur, demands that we reconsider our ethos, that we spend our tax dollars on people. We can afford it. We’ll simply tax the rich like we used to do.

We, as a society on the road to ruin, need to start thinking about what’s next, after the criminals and sycophants are dead, in prison or otherwise removed from seats of power, and the millions who voted for the little man are looking at the wreckage of their country and replaying in their memories the lies, tinny arguments and easy solutions they voted for and with that reflection, reconsidering the role of the state in assuring wellbeing. Because they, like the rest of us, are going to need it.