Listen now (66 min) | This week I welcome journalist Matt Rosenberg back to The Glenn Show. Matt is the senior editor of Wirepoints, a news site that covers politics and economics in Illinois, and author of What Next, Chicago?: Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son. As a veteran reporter and fellow native Chicagoan, Matt has a deep, street-level knowledge of the city that informs his work and attitude, as you’ll see in this conversation.
How about we stop glamorizing or treating as normal unmarried sexual relationships? How about we bring back something akin to the Motion Picture Production Code but for the digital age? How about instead of telling kids that so long as they use “protection” everything will be fine, and instead tell them that using another person for sex is wrong and that being a decent person entails limiting one’s sexual activity to a relationship where there is love & commitment & a willingness to take shared responsibility for any children that may result?
Moral relativism is what gets you out-of-wedlock birthrates as high as 90%. Those of us wealthy or clever enough to outwit nature (at least temporarily) manage to avoid the worst consequences of premarital sexual relationships. At the lower rungs of the social scale, different considerations and calculations will be made, and so long as we all choose to pretend that there’s nothing objectively wrong with sex outside of marriage, we lose the ability to make normative judgements about those considerations and calculations.
I read Matt's book last year after he appeared on TGS, and it helped me enormously to put into perspective the issues that concern me about Seattle. We aren't even close to suffering in the manner Chicago is, and largely because we are still a tech capital in the US and flush with funds. Matt's work is a warning call to all cities because of the cultural decay currently flourishing.
Celebrity culture, like the Kardashian family for example, have a more important impact on our culture than I think is ever considered. It doesn't help that mirror neurons get activated in normal folks watching the elite lead exotic lives in the media, where marital relationships are not modeled as a first step, but usually as a final step in having a family, if at all. For a while, perhaps still, it seemed that being an unmarried celebrity with a child was the cool thing to do. From my perspective, marriage's first task is to protect children.
There's a lot to unpack from this discussion, but I'll focus on the label used - "the next Detroit". It's hard to imagine once (economically) large and (culturally) powerful cities such as New York and Chicago on the verge of collapse, not due to industrial shifts as experienced in Detroit, but rather through shifts brought upon by cultural black holes. To me this phenomenon is more reminiscent of being "the next" Havana or Phnom Penh.
32:20 Unfortunately Rosenberg mischaracterizes qualified immunity, which goes well beyond excluding government agents from civil suits for acting within the "legal bounds" of doing their jobs. In fact, qualified immunity has prevented many police officers from being sued for violating citizens' constitutional rights simply because there hadn't been a previous court ruling about the specific violating behavior. https://reason.com/2020/09/05/abolish-qualified-immunity/
I have an honest question that has been burning in my mind for well over a year now. When are we, as American citizens and thinking people interested in the truth, allowed to notice and comment freely on the vast overrepresentation on African Americans in criminal participation? Homicide, violent crime broadly, theft and so on nationwide and in all but every major city in nearly every state in the union? Statistic after statistic, an avalanche of data and on the ground video after video and accompanying accounts scream this reality but it feels unmentionable. The shocking increase in the victimization of Asian Americans in cities like San Francisco very very often have black men as the victimizers and the media seems to be dedicated to twisting themselves to death to not draw attention to it. For what it may be worth, I’m a black man and I find it disgusting to see what appears to be a cultural factory pumping out violent mediocrity that’s unmentionable and ever expanding.
Lance, people such as you, Glenn, John, Coleman Hughes, etc have a distinct advantage over the rest of us. As a Black person, you can say things that we could never dream of saying. The truth is a luxury that non-Black people simply cannot afford in the US any longer.
According to Howard Schoonover on the YouTube comments for this video, it's all due to inbreeding since blacks (and Appalachian whites) don't necessarily know that their baby mamas/daddies are actually their blood relations due to high rates of hookups and low rates of marriage. Consanguinity is a well-known cause of lowered IQ which is associated with higher than average levels of criminality. Per Howard...
Regarding the "anti-Asian hate" issue, which was discussed in a faculty meeting at the time as a "white" problem, one has to wonder: Why do they NEED to believe that white people are the problem? They cited the massage parlor mass shooting, to which I responded that the perpetrator claimed the motive wasn't racial, but moral, only to beget the reply: He was lying. He did do it because he hates Asian women. (How did they know this, one wonders.)
Well then how about all those videos of melanin-rich folks pushing people onto subway tracks, knocking down old men and killing them, rampaging into stores, breaking windows and carrying off whatever fits in their melanin-rich arms, video after video...
I bring this up to my nephew on some rant about the lies promulgated by the media. I'm asking him what the damned telos is behind lying about the demographic that is mainly responsible -- you should have seen him sputtering and practically vomiting all over himself! NO! Literally shouting: NO! That's not true! Me: I'll send you the videos. There will be many...NO! It can't be true!
I think in Leftism generally the idea is that "Society" is always to blame for any sort of crime or failure, which is why Lefties are usually talking about "structural" issues or always campaigning for more social programs and more money (Leftists in general have a hard time acknowledging agency or personal responsibility or even biology).
But in Social Justice Leftism (which is the reigning religion and morality of our time, esp among the thinking classes) the twist is not only is Society always responsible, but White society, White history, and all White people, living or dead, are the culprit for any pain or misfortune that happens to a non-White. (This is why they concoct ideas like "internalized white supremacy" and "white-adjacent").
More or less: in the Social Justice religion, White people (esp men) are Satan, responsible for all evil and all pain and suffering.
Did you happen to see the BLK/Michelle Obama initiative music video “No Voting No Vucking”? A lost direct appeal to African Americans to vote centered around sex and the withholding of sex? The music video can be seen on YouTube.
To invoke John and Hitchens, the rejection of facts in the service of self pitying black racial dogma of permanent and all encompassing victimhood is entirely religious it’s nature. It’s keeping two sets of books or, as Stephen Jay Gould put it, a sort of racial non-overlapping magisteria.
Thanks Glenn for bringing Matt Rosenberg on. As a resident of downtown Chicago, he is spot on with all of the issues plaguing our city (he did miss the motorcycle troops that invade this city twice a week causing havoc and Kim Foxx but perhaps for another episode).
Lori Lightfoot is the Donald Trump of the Left. She caters to low information voters which is why she will survive the primary. She has Tik Tok videos dancing around showing her accomplishments. I'm a big fan of Raymond Lopez who is not shy about criticizing the increase in crime and supporting the police. He was even bold enough to participate in the Columbus Day parade which has gotten a lot of flack by members on the Left.
I'm a criminal justice and gun violence researcher and a faculty member at a university in Illinois. If I hear another pundit or read another journalist reference the fact that the homicide rate was higher in the 1990s I will scream! I know the gun violence stats for practically every city of at least 10,000 people in the US. Sure, there are about 1/4 as many homicides in NYC as 1991, and Chicago's murder rate is not the highest in the country, but there are an overwhelming number of cities in the US that are experiencing more shootings and gun homicides than ever before. It's a red herring to compare gun violence today to the crack years, especially since back then a gunshot wound was practically a death sentence whereas today about 2/3 of shootings aren't lethal, but are just as destructive. Plus, now we have big-city, Chicago-style gun violence in hundreds of small cities where weekly shootings were previously never a regularity, including in the late-80s and early-90s. Peoria and Champaign are two tragic examples of this. And yet - radio silence from the mainstream media or ALWAYS a caveat comparing the violecne today to the 1990s like it's an apples to apples comparison. It's not. I hope this issue causes the Democratic party substantial losses.
The Democratic candidate running for the Illinois 13th house district in a debate last week suggested that more after school programs should be implemented to reduce gun violence in Champaign-Urbana. Are you freaking kidding me? Why is it okay to suggest this weak ass solution to gun violence when it mostly impacts Black men and boys? Would she dare suggest that more after school programs would have prevented the mass shootings in Highland Park or Uvalde? For some reason there is a gross misconception that the majority of people killing other people aren't deeply troubled, they just need something better to do or a mentor to talk them out of it. WTF? When did it become outrageous to simply state that it is highly anti-social and unacceptable to shoot and/or kill another human being? This is not normal and the Democrats are normalizing it, like any poor black or brown kid cannot help but getting a gun and potentially using it unless we give them a good reason not to do this. It's disgusting and racist to have such low expectations for Black boys and men.
What is “gun violence?” Is it gun violence if a victim pulls out a gun and shoots their perpetrator? Lowering expectations of black teens and men may save a persons life and racism has nothing to do with it. Facts do. What’s about to happen is some major vigilante Justice, the northern cities are having more issues with violence than the southern cities for a reason. Otherwise, I agree with many of your points.
How about we stop glamorizing or treating as normal unmarried sexual relationships? How about we bring back something akin to the Motion Picture Production Code but for the digital age? How about instead of telling kids that so long as they use “protection” everything will be fine, and instead tell them that using another person for sex is wrong and that being a decent person entails limiting one’s sexual activity to a relationship where there is love & commitment & a willingness to take shared responsibility for any children that may result?
Moral relativism is what gets you out-of-wedlock birthrates as high as 90%. Those of us wealthy or clever enough to outwit nature (at least temporarily) manage to avoid the worst consequences of premarital sexual relationships. At the lower rungs of the social scale, different considerations and calculations will be made, and so long as we all choose to pretend that there’s nothing objectively wrong with sex outside of marriage, we lose the ability to make normative judgements about those considerations and calculations.
I read Matt's book last year after he appeared on TGS, and it helped me enormously to put into perspective the issues that concern me about Seattle. We aren't even close to suffering in the manner Chicago is, and largely because we are still a tech capital in the US and flush with funds. Matt's work is a warning call to all cities because of the cultural decay currently flourishing.
Celebrity culture, like the Kardashian family for example, have a more important impact on our culture than I think is ever considered. It doesn't help that mirror neurons get activated in normal folks watching the elite lead exotic lives in the media, where marital relationships are not modeled as a first step, but usually as a final step in having a family, if at all. For a while, perhaps still, it seemed that being an unmarried celebrity with a child was the cool thing to do. From my perspective, marriage's first task is to protect children.
There's a lot to unpack from this discussion, but I'll focus on the label used - "the next Detroit". It's hard to imagine once (economically) large and (culturally) powerful cities such as New York and Chicago on the verge of collapse, not due to industrial shifts as experienced in Detroit, but rather through shifts brought upon by cultural black holes. To me this phenomenon is more reminiscent of being "the next" Havana or Phnom Penh.
Please bring Matt back accompanied by "Statik".
An interesting conversation. The recording ended abruptly.
Had me thinking perhaps Chicago had finally consumed Matt. Has he been heard from since the recording?
This is a very important conversation. Thank you.
Nothing to do with Chicago but you will find the Jesse Jackson part quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEXJ2bPGY88&t=649s
32:20 Unfortunately Rosenberg mischaracterizes qualified immunity, which goes well beyond excluding government agents from civil suits for acting within the "legal bounds" of doing their jobs. In fact, qualified immunity has prevented many police officers from being sued for violating citizens' constitutional rights simply because there hadn't been a previous court ruling about the specific violating behavior. https://reason.com/2020/09/05/abolish-qualified-immunity/
I have an honest question that has been burning in my mind for well over a year now. When are we, as American citizens and thinking people interested in the truth, allowed to notice and comment freely on the vast overrepresentation on African Americans in criminal participation? Homicide, violent crime broadly, theft and so on nationwide and in all but every major city in nearly every state in the union? Statistic after statistic, an avalanche of data and on the ground video after video and accompanying accounts scream this reality but it feels unmentionable. The shocking increase in the victimization of Asian Americans in cities like San Francisco very very often have black men as the victimizers and the media seems to be dedicated to twisting themselves to death to not draw attention to it. For what it may be worth, I’m a black man and I find it disgusting to see what appears to be a cultural factory pumping out violent mediocrity that’s unmentionable and ever expanding.
Lance, people such as you, Glenn, John, Coleman Hughes, etc have a distinct advantage over the rest of us. As a Black person, you can say things that we could never dream of saying. The truth is a luxury that non-Black people simply cannot afford in the US any longer.
According to Howard Schoonover on the YouTube comments for this video, it's all due to inbreeding since blacks (and Appalachian whites) don't necessarily know that their baby mamas/daddies are actually their blood relations due to high rates of hookups and low rates of marriage. Consanguinity is a well-known cause of lowered IQ which is associated with higher than average levels of criminality. Per Howard...
Regarding the "anti-Asian hate" issue, which was discussed in a faculty meeting at the time as a "white" problem, one has to wonder: Why do they NEED to believe that white people are the problem? They cited the massage parlor mass shooting, to which I responded that the perpetrator claimed the motive wasn't racial, but moral, only to beget the reply: He was lying. He did do it because he hates Asian women. (How did they know this, one wonders.)
Well then how about all those videos of melanin-rich folks pushing people onto subway tracks, knocking down old men and killing them, rampaging into stores, breaking windows and carrying off whatever fits in their melanin-rich arms, video after video...
I bring this up to my nephew on some rant about the lies promulgated by the media. I'm asking him what the damned telos is behind lying about the demographic that is mainly responsible -- you should have seen him sputtering and practically vomiting all over himself! NO! Literally shouting: NO! That's not true! Me: I'll send you the videos. There will be many...NO! It can't be true!
I think in Leftism generally the idea is that "Society" is always to blame for any sort of crime or failure, which is why Lefties are usually talking about "structural" issues or always campaigning for more social programs and more money (Leftists in general have a hard time acknowledging agency or personal responsibility or even biology).
But in Social Justice Leftism (which is the reigning religion and morality of our time, esp among the thinking classes) the twist is not only is Society always responsible, but White society, White history, and all White people, living or dead, are the culprit for any pain or misfortune that happens to a non-White. (This is why they concoct ideas like "internalized white supremacy" and "white-adjacent").
More or less: in the Social Justice religion, White people (esp men) are Satan, responsible for all evil and all pain and suffering.
Did you happen to see the BLK/Michelle Obama initiative music video “No Voting No Vucking”? A lost direct appeal to African Americans to vote centered around sex and the withholding of sex? The music video can be seen on YouTube.
To invoke John and Hitchens, the rejection of facts in the service of self pitying black racial dogma of permanent and all encompassing victimhood is entirely religious it’s nature. It’s keeping two sets of books or, as Stephen Jay Gould put it, a sort of racial non-overlapping magisteria.
Thanks Glenn for bringing Matt Rosenberg on. As a resident of downtown Chicago, he is spot on with all of the issues plaguing our city (he did miss the motorcycle troops that invade this city twice a week causing havoc and Kim Foxx but perhaps for another episode).
Lori Lightfoot is the Donald Trump of the Left. She caters to low information voters which is why she will survive the primary. She has Tik Tok videos dancing around showing her accomplishments. I'm a big fan of Raymond Lopez who is not shy about criticizing the increase in crime and supporting the police. He was even bold enough to participate in the Columbus Day parade which has gotten a lot of flack by members on the Left.
I'm a criminal justice and gun violence researcher and a faculty member at a university in Illinois. If I hear another pundit or read another journalist reference the fact that the homicide rate was higher in the 1990s I will scream! I know the gun violence stats for practically every city of at least 10,000 people in the US. Sure, there are about 1/4 as many homicides in NYC as 1991, and Chicago's murder rate is not the highest in the country, but there are an overwhelming number of cities in the US that are experiencing more shootings and gun homicides than ever before. It's a red herring to compare gun violence today to the crack years, especially since back then a gunshot wound was practically a death sentence whereas today about 2/3 of shootings aren't lethal, but are just as destructive. Plus, now we have big-city, Chicago-style gun violence in hundreds of small cities where weekly shootings were previously never a regularity, including in the late-80s and early-90s. Peoria and Champaign are two tragic examples of this. And yet - radio silence from the mainstream media or ALWAYS a caveat comparing the violecne today to the 1990s like it's an apples to apples comparison. It's not. I hope this issue causes the Democratic party substantial losses.
The Democratic candidate running for the Illinois 13th house district in a debate last week suggested that more after school programs should be implemented to reduce gun violence in Champaign-Urbana. Are you freaking kidding me? Why is it okay to suggest this weak ass solution to gun violence when it mostly impacts Black men and boys? Would she dare suggest that more after school programs would have prevented the mass shootings in Highland Park or Uvalde? For some reason there is a gross misconception that the majority of people killing other people aren't deeply troubled, they just need something better to do or a mentor to talk them out of it. WTF? When did it become outrageous to simply state that it is highly anti-social and unacceptable to shoot and/or kill another human being? This is not normal and the Democrats are normalizing it, like any poor black or brown kid cannot help but getting a gun and potentially using it unless we give them a good reason not to do this. It's disgusting and racist to have such low expectations for Black boys and men.
What is “gun violence?” Is it gun violence if a victim pulls out a gun and shoots their perpetrator? Lowering expectations of black teens and men may save a persons life and racism has nothing to do with it. Facts do. What’s about to happen is some major vigilante Justice, the northern cities are having more issues with violence than the southern cities for a reason. Otherwise, I agree with many of your points.
Huh? Could you please expand on the point you're making here? I'm not quite getting it, but I have the feeling it's worth understanding. Thank you.