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.
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.
Oct 10, 2022·edited Oct 10, 2022Liked by Glenn Loury
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.
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.
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.
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.