Factory Reset
A peaceful reboot powered by the Constitution, sunlight, and smaller egos.
By Max Liebermann | October 27, 2025
Money is the next malware. If politics is speech, fine—make it audible. Real-time disclosure for all contributions above a modest threshold, machine-readable, searchable, with donor chains unspooled to the last LLC matryoshka. You can still give; you just can’t hide behind “Concerned Ferrets for Freedom, Inc.” When the cash shows up in daylight, the legislative whack-a-mole slows down because we can see the moles.
Now the presidency. Article II powers are elastic; they need a belt. Congress can statutorily sunset emergency declarations unless renewed by vote every 60 days, and courts can be required to fast-track challenges to rule-by-memo. If we want true term limits or regularized Supreme Court terms, that’s Article V territory. An amendment convention called by the states is constitutional gospel, not a fever dream. Use it like a fire alarm behind glass: clearly labeled, rarely pulled, but there when the building smokes.
What about crime and the trillion-dollar response industry we’ve built around it? Try capitalism with a conscience and a calculator. Make work pay more than trouble. Expand wage-boosting tools that actually pass conservative and liberal sniff tests—a supercharged Earned Income Tax Credit that deposits weekly and phases out smoothly so a small raise doesn’t trigger a fiscal cliff. Strip out the junk fees of poverty: ban predatory fines that boomerang people back into court, digitize simple expungements, and let licensing boards judge skill, not paperwork trauma. Fewer perverse incentives, fewer arrests for being poor, fewer gold-plated cages we can’t afford.
Health and education are not charities; they’re national infrastructure. Keep it capitalist, just stop pretending the current bazaar is a market. Transparent hospital and insurer pricing with enforceable penalties, nationwide catastrophic coverage as a floor so a car crash doesn’t draft you into bankruptcy, and fierce competition above that floor where innovators, not lobbyists, win. In schools, fund mastery: pay teachers more for outcomes tied to student growth, not longer meetings; give families real choices among public options; build a national on-ramp for rapid retraining so a 50-year-old warehouse worker can become a 52-year-old robotics tech without selling a kidney. You want less crime? Fund the future people want to live in.
Defense stays strong, just smarter. The point of a sword is to be sharp enough that you rarely have to use it. Pivot procurement to smaller, upgradeable platforms; tie contracts to on-time delivery with clawbacks that actually claw. Lead alliances with chips, clean energy, and network security as much as with carriers. Peace is cheaper when your friends are richer and your enemies are bored.
“How do we do this without torches and pitchforks?” With habits. Vote in primaries as if a loved one’s job depends on it, because it might. Join the boring local boards that quietly decide everything. Support candidates who promise fewer press conferences and more markups you can read. Demand every debate include one question: “Which of your powers will you give up?” Reward the ones who answer with specifics. Divest your attention from outrage merchants; starve the algorithm that’s been dining on our amygdalas. Patriotism isn’t a hat; it’s a checklist.
“And if they ignore us?” Then we escalate—legally. States pass matching model laws. Courts enforce transparency. Citizens sue and win. If Washington can’t hear the country, the country speaks through Article V. Propose amendments that install off-switches: term limits with staggered transitions, an anti-shutdown fuse, an ethics code with teeth for every branch, and yes, a narrowly tailored national recall mechanism that requires a supermajority and a cooling-off period so we don’t govern by tantrum. Hard to abuse, easy to understand, signed by the people who own the building.
All of this is secular by design. Worship freely, legislate narrowly. The First Amendment bars an altar in the Oval Office and a sermon at the bench; let’s live like we’ve read it. We can love our faiths and still insist government love the rules.
You asked for a reset without breaking the machine. Here it is: sunlight, smaller egos, simpler rules, stronger floors, sterner audits, and citizens who show up between Novembers. America has not lost its way; we’ve just muted the GPS and opened a dozen snack apps. Close the nonsense. Unmute the map. Then, in the spirit of a certain catchphrase, look every branch in the eye and say, kindly but firmly: you work for us. Now get back to work.
