A 9/11 Reset: Why America Needs to Reboot Before the Financial and Political Fallout Gets Worse

America Is at a Blue Screen of Death

I used to have those old PCs before I finally made the switch to Apple. You know what I’m talking about. That blue screen pops up and everything freezes. The only way forward is to shut it down and restart. That is exactly where I think this country is right now. We are sitting at a national blue screen of death, and if we do not hit reset, the consequences are going to be ugly on every level including your wallet.

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I want to do something different. I want to step back from the noise, from the grievance-airing, from the finger-pointing, and actually ask a serious question. What have we learned, and more importantly, what have we gotten completely wrong?

Who Actually Benefits from Division

Here is something I have been saying for years, and I will keep saying it until people actually absorb it. The people who benefit from constant division are not you. They are not your neighbor. They are:

• Social media algorithm designers who profit from outrage clicks
• Political operatives who need an enemy to keep their base fired up
• Media personalities and influencers whose income depends on you being angry
• The military-industrial complex lobbying for 1.5 trillion dollars in defense spending next year

Follow the money. It always tells you the truth.

The Policy Failures We Need to Honestly Evaluate

I am not interested in ceremony for its own sake. What I am interested in is accountability. Since 9/11, this country has made a series of decisions that deserve serious scrutiny. A 25-year milestone is the perfect moment to do exactly that.

• The Patriot Act handed government surveillance powers that have never been fully rolled back
• Foreign policy went off the rails in ways that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives
• Defense budgets kept expanding regardless of outcomes, because that is how the machine works
• Political polarization was weaponized to keep citizens distracted while the real decisions were made behind closed doors

We should be asking hard questions about every single one of these.

A Personal Note on What Unity Actually Looks Like

I have shared pieces of my 9/11 story before on the show. Where I was, what happened with my wife and sister, the experience of watching New York go through something unimaginable. After that day, at Markowski Investments, we went out and bought hundreds of FDNY and NYPD caps and sent them out to listeners all over the country. People were calling in, we were mailing them out. It sounds simple, but that kind of gesture meant something. People felt connected to each other across geography and political lines.

That spirit did not last. And I think we have to be honest about why.

The Reset We Actually Need

I am not naive. I know the forces that profit from division are powerful and well-funded. But milestones matter. The 250th anniversary of this country, the 25th anniversary of 9/11, these are moments where leadership could choose a different path.

What would that look like?

• A genuine call to stop treating political opponents as enemies
• An honest accounting of foreign policy and domestic policy failures without partisan spin
• Redirecting the national conversation away from grievance and toward problem-solving
• Holding the influencers, politicians, and media figures accountable for profiting off division

Is this wishful thinking? Maybe. But I believe someone has to stand up and say it out loud. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been making similar points recently. There are others. The exhaustion is real, and it is spreading.

The question is whether we use this anniversary to actually reset, or whether we just let the machine keep running the same broken loop.