By: Matt Rosenberg
After the disastrous one-term tenure of outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago has landed hard at an urgent turning point. The city is wracked by disarray and dysfunction of epic scope. It’s moral decay that’s driving corrosive crime and failing schools – from which black and brown Chicagoans suffer worst. Moral decay drives revolving door courts and Chicagoland’s sanctioned kleptocracy. We don’t know right from wrong any more.
Policy isn’t the go-to move here. Instead, from top to bottom Chicago has to first embrace traditional values. The Golden Rule. Thrift. Ethics. Personal responsibility. Institutional accountability. Freedom to choose. Competition. Everything gone wrong in Chicago stems from abandoning the basic rules of living, doing business, and governing. We can’t continue to dance around evil and explain it away with critical race theory suffused in white guilt. Rather, Chicago must fight the destructive and amoral impulses coursing through the city. Chicago must demand better. Evil has had the upper hand here for several years. If Chicago can’t muster the courage to torpedo its underlying moral decay, the city’s troubling predicament will worsen even further.
***
This is my last piece for Wirepoints. I wrote it before Brandon Johnson beat Paul Vallas for Chicago Mayor with 52 percent of the 38 percent of registered voters who cast ballots April 4 – or 19.6 percent of the electorate. This column would have been my advice to Vallas had he won and it constitutes my advice to Mayor-elect Johnson. I hope he proves skeptics wrong and turns around Chicago’s ship, now so badly off course. I’m leaving Wirepoints entirely of my own will, with a full heart and infinitely grateful for my wise and true colleagues; plus my new friends in and from Chicagoland, and across the U.S. I lived in Chicago for 30 years and I’ve been back for most of the last 30 months. But I’m about to become a senior citizen – and it’s time to hike more summits with my wife, tend the garden in our Seattle home where we raised our two children, and plan the next big steps in our life. I want to express great appreciation to my outstanding colleagues Mark Glennon, Ted Dabrowski, and John Klingner – and the entire Wirepoints team. Warm thanks to all who’ve enriched, read, and widely spread my work.
***
Today’s troubles were crystal clear in 1982 to Chicago novelist Saul Bellow
Drawing in part from my 2021 book What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son, I want to share some parting thoughts. They’re tied in part to a great work of contemporary Chicago fiction by the late Saul Bellow.
Bellow’s 1982 novel The Dean’s December foretells today’s troubles in Chicago. He asks, what does not turn to sausage here? Governance reforms, anti-corruption drives, anti-crime initiatives, and certainly the apologia-studded language of Chicago’s popular social science all are finely milled filler, thinks Bellow’s protagonist Albert Corde.
Corde is a former journalist and now teacher and dean at a prestigious but unnamed Chicago university on the South Side and has dared to lay bare the city in a series of national magazine articles. Consequently he’s suffering blowback in extremis. He has told tales out of school.
About despicable conditions for prisoners in the county jail. About the flaying by authorities and the media of a black reformer warden. About a former hit man turned heroin addict – later an inspiring rehab counselor – who’s turned away when seeking emergency drug treatment from a University of Chicago hospital. He was too large and black and scary. About insufferable self-impressed Chicago political insiders, and the devastation of violent crime in the city’s bleak precincts.
The “sealing off” of free thought and critical inquiry
In exposing Chicago’s moral crippling of itself, Corde necessarily side-steps all the usual progressive nostrums about cause and effect. Tensions with his superiors at the university result. As is still true in the 2020s in Chicago and Illinois there are things you just can’t say. It comes further to a head when Corde advocates for an aggressive police investigation into the murder of a white student in a risky neighborhood near campus. When two black suspects are arraigned and set to face trial he is labeled a racist by angry student protestors including his own nephew. The media amplifies this racial grievance.
His provost is still urbane to him – but almost too much so. Corde can see he has overspent the university’s political capital and that his days there may be numbered. Then suddenly he must contemplate all this from Bucharest, Romania, where he accompanies his brilliant astronomer wife for the deathwatch and funeral of her mother.
From behind the early ’80s Iron Curtain, Corde notes that for Bucharest locals, “All conversations with foreigners had to be reported. Few people were bold enough to visit the American library. Those who sat in the reading room were probably secret agents. It was one of the greatest achievements of Communism to seal off so many millions of people.”
Corde sees a no less purposeful sealing off of thought around Chicago’s troubles although the constraints on dialog are slightly more oblique.
“Words that get us nowhere”
After a woman is kidnapped, stashed in a car trunk, repeatedly raped and then killed by a recently released ex-convict, Corde in researching his magazine articles comes to talk to a public defender. “We sat there explaining evils to each other, to pass them off somehow, redistribute the various monstrous elements, and compose something the well-disposed liberal democratic temperament could live with.”
Bellow’s fictional protagonist continues, “Nobody actually said, ‘an evil has been done.’ A tender liberal society has to find soft ways to institutionalize harshness and smooth it over compatibly with progress, buoyancy. So that with us, when people are merciless, when they kill, we explain that…(the) causes lie in certain human and social failures.’”
Corde is unsurprised this same tendency to shift responsibility for grave wrongdoing makes its way into the news. “Nothing true – really true – could be said in the papers.” He reflects, “These times we live in give us foolish thoughts to think, dead categories of intellect and words that get us nowhere. It was just these words and categories that made the setting of a real depth level so important.”
Corde postulates that a fundamental decoupling urge, a lack of attachment to life and its meaningful othernesses, is what lies at the root of the brutal, deeply inhumane violence that wracks Chicago.
He is describing what some would call nihilism.
Webster defines nihilism as “a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.”
As killings mounted last summer, St. Louis’ Third Ward Committeewoman Lucinda Frazier expressed the evil presence of nihilism in her own way.
She said, “I am so sick of this violence. I don’t think it’s drug dealers. I don’t think it’s gang bangers. I think a lot of these crimes are being committed by young people who feel like they’re going to be dead at a certain age, so they might as well do what they want. It’s unconscionable.”
U.S. homicide hubs including Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Baltimore live with this affliction. They also live with an illiberal apparatus of elected officials and NGOs mostly dedicated to excusing it. By playing the race card, ceaselessly. As when politicians and activists use class- and race-driven rhetoric to excuse looting and violence against property.
The erasure of common standards, of merit: it cannot hold
Liberalism in Chicago and other Cities On The Edge has warped to champion the fiercely-held belief that because of past victimizations blacks cannot now in the 2020s be expected to adhere to basic community standards. That’s not only racist, but ignores relentless competition – as black South Side native, economist, author and commentator Glenn Loury recently said.
“We’re in the twenty-first century. The year is 2023. The country is changing and changing and changing. Tens of millions of non-European immigrants are making lives here. The politics of this country, the Hispanics are a more significant ethnicity than the blacks in the long term when you think about ethnic pluralism in the country. The Chinese are coming, the world is changing. Globalization. Nobody’s got time for a person who can’t read and who can’t count….I think this is shtick. ‘We were enslaved. We are black. We are owed something’ is a house of cards.The idea that, perpetually, you would warp American institutions to favor people who were not excelling on the merits because of these kinds of second and third-order claims about exclusion and racism? It shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen.”
Loury is rightly targeting the cultural and political refusal to hold blacks to expectations based on “traditional values and beliefs” (see definition of “nihilism,” above).
Saul Bellow understood the fatal tendency of nihilism 41 years ago. His fictional character Corde justifies the dark tone of his recent Chicago writings for the popular press and argues for an ecumenical cleaning of slates. A fresh start across the board, with a new outlook no longer wedded to the cult of excuse-making.
Bellow writes, “…there was a heavy death traffic which called perhaps for a revision of views. ‘Can’t go through it on the old iambic pentameter,’ was how Corde formulated it.” For that is the rhythm and reasoning of a sinking city.
A way out of the downward spiral?
A turning point evident to many in the Chicago diaspora came in 2020 when officialdom surrendered the city to rioters and looters and then raised the bridges over the Chicago River in a half-hearted attempt to stanch the bleeding downtown. The imagery of the raised bridges was a sharp prod. I came back to Chicago, determined to see if there was a way out of the downward spiral, and the timid, shoddy thinking at the root of the surrender. I went back to the South Side, where I grew up.
Woodlawn on Chicago’s South Side is still hurting. But I would look deeper and see real hope. At 63rd and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, under the El tracks, is a fast-food dive fronted by men sharing joints on the sidewalk. Periodically they step up to drivers or passengers on 63rd and in a fluid one-handed motion collect cash and slip little packets into their hands. Walking south on MLK, I pass a woman with a thousand-yard glassy-eyed stare in the grip of a powerful high. Other pedestrians are loping around in tight little circles, looking lost.
Investment is a wager and no one likes long odds. So in Woodlawn, Pastor Corey Brooks is all up in everyone’s business. Brooks heads New Beginnings Church and its nonprofit arm, Project H.O.O.D. It stands for Helping Others Obtain Destiny.
Brooks’ operation – powered by parishioners, philanthropy, and his energetic presence – has its fingers everywhere. Surrender-a-gun days. Grocery and “Free Produce Saturday” giveaways. Parenting classes. During covid, there were on-site learning co-ops with meals, laptops, and assistants to ensure kids could connect to their online classes and get extra help. Streamed lessons on financial education. A popular construction industry training program. Instruction for black women training as electricians, with eighteen certified graduates who marched in July 2021.
A future-facing view
Brooks even has plans – and most of the required $35 million has now been raised – for a state-of-the-art community and jobs training center including restaurants for food and beverage industry entrants, and a series of other trades education facilities. It’s to be built on the lot where Brooks earned the name “The Rooftop Pastor.” In 2011 he camped out for three months atop a Woodlawn hotel widely known for prostitution and drug dealing. He was aiming to raise almost half a million dollars to buy it and tear it down. With the help of parishioners spreading the word, he succeeded.
I first met Brooks on Halloween 2020. The church has organized a Harvest Party for parents and children. We’re at the very spot on MLK where the new community and career tech center would go.
Behind his SUV at the back of the lot Brooks counsels an agitated young man. I learn later that he’s in the Project H.O.O.D. construction training program and working at a job site. But he’s chafed. A Latino supervisor has confronted him about being late to work and not filling out daily time cards.
It looks heated. Brooks holds his ground, telling him that to keep a good job in construction you’ve got to be on time, fill out your time cards, and take orders from the boss. And he’d better get used to Mexicans in Chicagoland. They’re skilled in the building trades, and they’re here to play.
It’s a future-facing view. Not mired in the past, nor in grievance. Shaped instead by the idea of personal agency. Chicago needs more of that.
Digging deeper, in Chicago’s iconic Bridgeport
As I dug in deeper on my return to Chicago I would also see from parishioners of a vandalized church that you can let ignorance roll off your back like rainwater. Don’t get sidetracked.
On Sunday, November 8th in Bridgeport – just one day after Joe Biden is declared victorious against incumbent President Donald Trump – I’m walking to Mariano’s on Archer Avenue for groceries. I’m a block north from my place when something stops me dead in my tracks. It’s at Saint Mary Of Perpetual Help. An 1885-vintage Polish Cathedral that’s a Bridgeport landmark. A real beauty with rich stained glass windows, multiple cross-topped towers, and a finely wrought copper dome weathered to bright green.
Spray painted in large letters on the church’s south wall along 32nd Place are the words “God Is Dead. No Gods, No Masters.” Also anarchist symbols. And someone has sprayed Biden’s name in pink paint. An alabaster white statue of Saint Mary has also been defaced. The face spray-painted black on one side and pink on another.
I see a Chicago Police SUV parked on an angle as if guarding the church’s rear. I greet the officer and say, “This is new, isn’t it?” He replies, “Yep.” Shaking his head slowly up and down. “Damn,” I mutter. Shaking my own head now. Slowly, side to side. He hops out to commiserate. His name tag reads Campbell. He says, “I was baptized in this church. After all it’s done for the community….this?”
When I walk by again fifty minutes later with my shopping bag and backpack full of groceries, all the graffiti is gone. It’s deserted except for a young parishioner with his wife and their toddler in a stroller. “That was fast,” I say. He nods. “No TV trucks. We just took care of it.”
That’s how to handle an affront. With a cool head. Chicago is full of hot heads. Way too many fatal and nonfatal shootings result. We’re told again and again it’s the guns themselves that are the scourge, but it’s temperament.
Three-quarters of murders in Chicago result from arguments. The problem is the operating system, not the hardware. You can remain level-headed – yet at the same time legally carry a concealed weapon and use it only if utterly necessary for self-defense. More and more do exactly that now, in Chicago. It can be a lifesaver.
Then there are the convicted felons still illegally using guns. They’re a danger to the community. But too often they catch a break in court when facing new weapons charges. Judges won’t properly detain them before trial or properly sentence them after trial – not until their second, or third, or fourth go-round. Judicial and prosecutorial laxity aids and abets the armed robberies, carjackings, shootings, and killings charged to felony defendants or convicts who should have never been on the street to begin with.
It’s a reminder that officialdom has surrendered to evil under the guise of compassion.
Toting up the score: we’re losing
After the church desecration in Bridgeport I’m toting up the score. Forty-three shootings in Chicago over just that weekend, with six fatalities. Seventy-seven shootings and eighteen of them fatal over that full week’s course. Nobody blinks.
People have always left big cities for suburbs but there’s a new breadth and urgency to out-migration from failing centers of the North. Growing metroplexes like Greater Phoenix, Dallas, and Jacksonville may be reviled by Northern progressive elites, but the sneers mask a contest we’re losing. Competitors like these have better schools, lower taxes, safer streets, and eschew Chicago’s reflexive reviling of moderates and conservatives.
It’s true that after a dramatic hollowing-out of black neighborhoods, Chicago’s population was holding relatively steady because of a slow-rolling Latino and Asian influx.
Yet Illinois has landed in the top three for outmigration nationally, Chicago lost 50,000 residents between 2020 and 2022, and a Wild West feel has taken root once more.
Wilder than before, when violent crime was mainly confined to gangs and their neighborhoods. It’s more predatory, more random and widespread. More terrifying to more people.
The Summer of 2021 news became a steady drumbeat of Terror Dome bulletins. Shootings, mass shootings. Bands of marauding armed robbers, carjackers, or organized theft rings popping out of stolen vehicles to seize upon pedestrians and drivers.
The man with a hammer going at a passenger on the CTA train. The two victims spontaneously attacked downtown on State Street as passers-by then relieved them of valuables including shoes, while onlookers twerked and shot video. The culinary arts student who had to have part of his leg amputated after a violent attack last summer.
The sausage-making of progressive apologetics, versus “crux moves”
After George Floyd, the sausage-making of progressive apologetics intensified. The Great Unraveling gained steam in 2021, then rolled on. Major crimes in 2022 were up one-third from 2019 and 41 percent from 2021. The city’s murder rate last year climbed 39 percent from 2019 to land at 2nd-highest among the nation’s 20 biggest cities. It was 5 times New York’s rate. Chicago was still engulfed in rising crime as the first quarter of 2023 drew to a close, days before the mayoral run-off. You can get away with just about anything, just about anytime. Arrest rates continue to bear that out.
The excuse for murder, shootings, carjacking, auto thefts, retail theft, and armed robbery – other than the canard of “gun violence” – is “inequity.” It goes like this: until outcomes can be equalized, chaos will reign. Expect it. Get used to it.
Inequities today are clear – in income, education, and criminal justice system exposure. But contrary to popular claims they don’t stem from racism. Instead they follow from poor choices and sub-par efforts. By individuals. By parents. By the Chicago Teachers Union, which captains the sinking ship that is Chicago Public Schools.
We don’t talk much about parents. We should. They’re either on-point, focused, fierce, demanding and loving – or sadly neglectful. We’re always ready to cover for the latter. But who covers for Chicago’s crime victims, mostly black? Nobody.
Here’s a way to know if Chicago’s new mayor is on track: by the end of 2023, will combined major crimes be down to at least 2019’s level? By 2024’s end, will they be even lower still? If so, then real progress is underway. If not, yet another painful reckoning will be required.
The city’s worth saving.
The skyline still grows but never confuse construction cranes with real progress. That lies first in our hearts and homes.
The vast majority of Chicagoans have never starred in a mugshot nor had any reason to do so. On the whole they’re warm, welcoming, honest, hard-working, and often brilliant, creative, and accomplished. The human resources of this place are still vast. Chicago should be able to do better. To conquer the tyranny of the minority.
From my years exploring the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and inland western United States, I’ve learned that experienced hikers have to be ready to make what’s called a “crux move.”
The going is often quite steep, and narrow. There are no guard rails. You’d better be sure of your footing and your route. When your path comes to what could be a dangerous fall, you pause. You consider where you are, and examine the terrain closely. Then you decide how to best get around or over the hazard, and onward. Then you do it. That’s your crux move.
It might be tricky. But you figure it out. And you certainly don’t turn back. Because you’ve already come too far. Your destination is ahead of you. Not behind you. Chicago’s next decade will have to be filled with crux moves.
Looking at ongoing shootings and attacks on police in Chicago, the esteemed black scholar and community activist Robert Woodson said recently the city is in “a crisis of values.” That’s exactly right.
So stop the bleeding right away, some say. Except that would require more than policy shifts. It would demand powerful, united agents of change the city hasn’t seen in years.
Perhaps all this gets easier if you have the toughest conversation first.
About living with moral authority.
About everybody owning their lives, their actions, their choices. From judges in dark robes to troubled young men on the streets and their parents.
Picture a city fearlessly unified around this common purpose.
That would be a Chicago with a bright future.
***
Parts of this essay are adapted from the author’s book, “What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son” (Bombardier Books, September 2021). Matt Rosenberg’s experience in public policy, journalism and advocacy spans 45 years. He worked on the Mirage Tavern undercover investigation of Chicago civic corruption in 1977, and ran seven precincts in the 48th Ward for Marion Volini when she won a Chicago City Council seat in a 1978 special election. He was a reporter, columnist, and editorialist for Lerner Voice Newspapers covering northeast DuPage County; and the director of the O’Hare Citizens Coalition. After moving to Seattle in 1994 he held a series of other positions. He grew up in South Shore, and Hyde Park – and later lived in Rogers Park, Edgewater, and Lakeview. Upon returning to Chicago to write and report, he determined the best Italian Beef is actually at Nottoli & Son on West Belmont.
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Hello Matt, a very fine written article on your behalf. Wow. Ypu nailed it and wish these nowadays politicians would read and take some of yout advice .You been around and know a lot of facts and solutions with many ideas that need to be implemented. I truly appreciate 🙏 your honesty. Farewell and continue your beautiful travels and adventures .
Robert Tito
Matt,
This is a powerful farewell piece. No one comment can do this exceptional article justice. Very good work as usual. I will greatly miss your informative writings on Chicago’s failing public education system and struggles over crime. Both are indeed spurred by a moral decay infecting the city’s population with the collapse of two parent households and declining religious practice. I hope that one day the city can experience a spiritual revival to reverse these troubling trends by coming to grips with reality.
Matt,
This piece was posted a while ago, you may not ever see what I am writing, and you don’t know me. I have been following your writing here on Wirepoints and read your book What Next Chicago? Your work on behalf of the city has been wonderful. I’ve found my fists clenched in rage at Chicago corruption, laughing out loud at your witty turns of phrase, and sighing in quiet resignation at your accounts of a city that can’t seem to get out of its own way. You are a real treasure and will be greatly missed.
James Bohn
A fantastic article, and particularly newsworthy with information on the departure. Matt’s book captured a lot, but the timely columns with Wirepoints have been interesting, accurate and informative, something that the news media is lacking. Matt Rosenberg was a great hire by Wirepoints and will be missed. Who else will be walking miles through the ‘hoods to observe and recount the actions of those directly affected? The cultural literacy added with the references from Bellow’s Cotes must be emphasized, enhanced perhaps from the legacy of cultural literacy in Matt’s family background. That too will be missed. Thanks Matt, and Wirepoints.… Read more »
A Native Son, Matt Rosenberg embodies a bunch of what made Chicago great. Straight talk, an honest broker, a caller of balls and strikes, no nonsense. His descriptive walks in the neighborhoods, reviews of delis and street cuisine, observations of landmarks and their current state of affairs, discussions with people on those walks, all provided an insight to the city and the man who was witnessing its steady degradation ….. and hostile indifference to address those deleterious factors causing the degradation by elected city officials. Papa Bear Halas, Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers, Walter Payton, Ron Santo, Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins,… Read more »
First of all, Matt, all the best to you and Pat in your retirement. Believe me, retirement is underrated. Like you, I grew up in South Shore and spent many summers at the wonderful Rainbow Beach. However, I would not even go there in the daytime now. I have said this many times before. I know many good people who continously vote Democrat, yet the evidence is overwhelming that they cannot govern effectively and their policies are bankrupt. I often wonder if these good people have lost all rational thinking skills. Businesses and citizens are leaving Democrat enclaves in droves,… Read more »
This is a great piece that hits on so many issues plaguing the City of Chicago. I agree with several of the commentors on this post – the city needs all the help it can get. Matt points out several things, however, these two jumped out at me. 1. Lack of moral conduct. Where did it go? Searching for it. 2. The Golden Rule. This was taught to me and my family when I was a young child and in today’s salacious society, that’s all out the window. With the new mayor set to be sworn in, I’ve heard from… Read more »
The golden rule includes shooting at your neighbor just as you would expect him to shoot at you first.
Thank you for all your hard work and excellent writing covering Chicago over the past 3 years. This city needs all the help it can get, and you were certainly trying to help.
I think this sums the problems of Chicago and of the United States…
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats – Poems | Academy of American Poets
A wonderful column. Personal and deeply reported and thought through. Chicago needs your insight. Though I would never tell anyone who is ready to leave a dying city not to go. Just that it’s sad what that means in real life — which is that the people the city most needs, leave. I wish you joy back in the Pacific Northwest. Though it sounds as if there is plenty of urban trouble to write about there, too. I hope you do. I have loved reading your columns. They are tough, but wise and humane, which is the only way to… Read more »
Beautifully written farewell column, Matt. Your insights and contributions to Wirepoints and the greater conversation about Chicago’s survival will be deeply missed. How fitting that your final column addresses the “moral” issues because they ARE the root causes of what ails this city, state and country. Morals are like fundamentals. You simply cannot succeed, survive or sustain anything without them. We need a return to personal responsibility, agency and accountability. Just think of all the crime and costs that come from poor choices and immoral behavior. Staggering.
Matt and WirePoints, thank you for acknowledging that Chicago’s problems aren’t just political, economic, and corruption problems, but also moral, ethical, and social. These issues that plague Chicago by extension also plague the rest of the state due to the fact that Chicago controls state politics. Chicago cannot become a functional and safe city until the many moral, ethical, and social issues plaguing it have been addressed and resolved. Some people are afraid to bring up these moral, ethical, and social issues because they don’t want to be viewed as judgmental, holier than thou, far right, or they don’t want… Read more »
This last article summed it up so beautifully. Thank you.
Godspeed Matt Rosenberg you have graced us with your brilliant writing and love for Chicago! Now it’s time to go enjoy your family and your life! Unplug and remember what goes around comes around for Chicago and all the citizens of my former home town. Elections certainly have consequences if one believes that they are conducted fairly. I believe it’s been fixed in Chicago for quite awhile and the unfortunate reality is that things have been on the decline for many more years than we all realize. Most of us live in a dreamworld of Kojak and Barnaby Jones when… Read more »
Awful schools are racist. Allowing murder free for all’s is racist. The unions take care of themselves and no one seems to have the backs of regular people. Obama ending charter schools in DC was racist. And no one had the spine to call him out on it… so failing schools need not figure out how to improve.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke Matt Rosenberg is a good man. And, he has tried to do something: to follow the legacy of his father with his own unique brand and style presenting rational arguments complete with exquisite facts to motivate humans – most notably, in Chicago – to greatness. The result? To leave in despair and utter frustration but with (from this writer’s viewpoint) complete justification. Why? As Jesus said in Matthew 7:6: “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t… Read more »
When only 19.6% of the electorate vote in a mayoral race, it shows that the either Chicago’s residents don’t care to turn the city around or they are fatalistic in believing that nothing can turn the city around
Another excellent perspective on Chicago and the decline of the city. I’m sorry it has to be this way,, but the idiots in Chicago chose their path with the Marxist Brandon Johnson. I’m sorry you will not be contributing to Wirepoints any longer Matt, but enjoy your well-deserved retirement with Patricia!
Thanks Matt. You will be missed.
You will be missed Matt. Best wishes to you and your family.
I’m not sure Chicago can be saved in a same world. It’s current course is beyond anyone’s reasonable moral compass and I see no indication that there’s any desire by its leaders or its public to come back to reality.
You’re deep thoughts, analysis, and prudent advice will be sorely missed Matt. I wish you and your wife all the best and thank you for producing a news product that could have, and should have been enlightening to Chicago. Had they only spent a few moments considering your writings, we’d live in a better world.
BJ is Lori on steroids. His platform is the will of the Chicago voters so grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show of a lifetime. It is o ne defiantly not to miss.
Matt, most of all, I will miss your unflinching optimism and your tour guide writeups of Chicagos eateries and neighborhoods.
You said “Chicago has to first embrace traditional values. The Golden Rule. Thrift. Ethics. Personal responsibility. Institutional accountability. Freedom to choose. Competition.” Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening in my lifetime. I’m sorry that my grandkids will never experience the grandeur of Chicago that I experienced growing up.
Enjoy the fish at the Pike Place Market.
If you look at the Cook County summary results of the election, you see “issue bonds” winning every time. Why does every one want to add more government debt to our property while the Federal Reserve is trying to slow down the economy by limiting credit issuance?
Matt, I’ve always enjoyed your writing style and admired how you could maintain hope and optimism while reporting on an increasingly deteriorating city and state. I’m more on the cynical side, especially since the voters spoke and Brandon Johnson is their solution.
It it so wonderful that you’re rejoining your family in the PNW. Thanks for everything you’ve done, Matt. Godspeed.
The city is worth saving. But you’re maybe 6% more optimistic than me.
The city is being let down by their media. Chicago is going to miss you.
Chicago is not worth saving.
By saving it you send the message that being completely morally bankrupt is ok. Well bail you out.
Saving Chicago is like saving Russia. No sane moral person would be for that.
In Chicago the very act of educating children makes them dumber and bankrupts the state. That is worth saving?
So much to comment on, so little time. I am blessed by Matt’s insights and his fierce love for Chicago. It’s just too bad and sad that Chicago already looks to continue its slide downward. Not living big in Chicago, I don’t follow Chicago news much, but the one thing I remember about the new mayor’s attitude is his statement that he wants to send more counselors on 911 calls. My expectation from that is dead counselors and more crime. If I lived in Chicago, I would be leaving. I will not be bringing my family to Chicago for anything,… Read more »
Thank you for your service to Wirepoints. I always enjoy reading your articles. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. I believe Chicago is beyond saving. The politicians handed the keys over to the criminals a long time ago, and now they want them back. Not so fast, said the criminals. The criminal element will remain active for years to come. Nothing will ever change until you get rid of useless career politicians. My prediction is that the new guy will be no better than the last person.
Thank you for your contributions to Wirepoints, Chicago, and most of all to clear thinking, always so perfectly expressed! We will miss you, but wish you all the best in Seattle.
Thanks for returning to Chicago Matt.
With this being Matt’s final column, some sadness. Along with his father, Milt Rosenberg, and Milt’s radio show on WGN, two voices of knowledge, thought, and reason have blessed us for decades. I wish Matt success and peace in all future endeavors. This article is arguably Matt’s pinnacle. So much to digest. But the first sentence and the last five tell the story. The first sentence spells out what Chicago has done to itself: “After the disastrous one-term tenure of outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago has landed hard at an urgent turning point.” Unfortunately, it turned… Read more »
To paraphrase Cook Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate and instill values.”
That’s not a bug per se when it comes to Democratic Party governance.
Enjoy your retirement Matt and thanks for all that top notch journalism and allowing me to post my 2 cents worth on WP.
And I’m not far behind you. Dem prog pols wrecked my old city of Detroit and my new home in Chicago.
The Chitty is not worth saving for the greed of overly generous pensioners.
Let them sell the luxury homes in Punta Gorda, Fl.
Let it go bust and start over with a new clean slate.
Very sad that I will not be able read, and entirely agree to, your spot-on reporting, your analysis and your thoughts. Your hope that Johnson will surprise everyone and turn the ship around is brave and optimistic, but sadly, there is no way that is going to happen…Chicago is in the grips of the CTU, WOKE thought, Socialist ideology, and the leanings of the likes of George Soros. Chicago is doomed. The potential for positive change died with this election. I am shocked the such a low percentage of the voting population chose to make themselves heard. Chicago voters (as… Read more »
All the best to you in you Matt in your future life. Even valient crusaders need a rest, and yours is well deserved.
Matt, enjoy your well deserved retirement. Hopefully this brilliant essay along with your other pieces will be read by many, and acted upon. I look forward to staying in touch with you, and following your adventures.
May God help the law abiding citizens of Chicago as they struggle to survive another liberal stooge who is soft on crime and bereft of common sense. Either the law abiding citizens of Chicago will tire of the madness and leave the city to the lawlessness, or they will gather enough cajones to elect a law and order mayor.
Matt, all the best for a very long and very healthy retirement. You are an excellent example of everything we hope for in a true journalist. Sadly, true journalists are in short supply and not appreciated as they once were. Thank you for introducing me to the term “moral rot” which describes what has taken place in Chicago, a once great American city that is past the point of no return. You can watch it continue to decline from the West Coast, which is not immune to the same dilemma, but with better weather. Safe travels.
Matt – Enjoy your retirement and adventures to come! Chicago will continue their bigotry of low expectations and group think behavior will remain. Politics flow downward from culture and until that changes we should expect nothing less.
It’s a sad fact.
I’m so sad you’re leaving, Matt. Each piece you wrote was a real gem and a gift to us.
You’ll be dearly missed.
Enjoy your retirement.❤️
great ideas. but, no chance they get executed on
And best of luck in Seattle! If you and your bride come through Las Vegas look me up. I am glad you did what you did. I came to the exact same conclusion you did and left the city in 2020. It was a sad day for me because I loved Chicago. Your father would have been as outraged as you at the turn of events under Lightfoot that led to Johnson. The lesson here is that the Chicago Democratic Machine so demoralized the average citizen that they feel hopeless. No vote will change their life, or the outcomes. Hence,… Read more »
You nailed it. The ambivalence is the average Chicago voter is pretty high. I think most reasonable folks have given up and know their time in the city is short-term anyway, so why bother. Ambivalence is a huge opportunity for organized wacko interests to take control. Never forget the wackos don’t want you to vote.
Jeff – If I ran the exchanges, the day after the mayoral inauguration, I would announce a move to Texas at the end of the year. I would claim an administration openly hostile to our industry and the innovation and wealth it generates created to much uncertainty to sustain operations over the long-term. Don’t make it personal, just cold hard facts. Make the state scramble. Force JB to draft and promote legislation or a constitutional amendment abolishing any kind of taxation on financial transactions. And when they don’t or can’t get all toe progs onboard, Brandon will bear the brand… Read more »
Matt, you have hit it out of the park with this excellent column, and I am sad that it is your final one here. I wish you all the best in your next chapter. 🙂 The most important point, which you have correctly addressed, is the lack of personal responsibility and anything resembling a moral compass, both in the city’s political realm, but also amongst many of its citizens. Instead of holding the people causing the problems accountable, their communities and leftist political “leaders” excuse the criminal behaviors and allow them to continue and escalate, because…slavery, racism, poverty, etc. Anyone… Read more »
well written and reasoned. However, we are not currently in an age of any sort of reason; this is Bond villain ‘you will do my bidding or die’ territory. Vallas was most likely a put up job; like an aging club fighter paid to take the fall. The problem was people actually voted for him, and they had to change the algorithms late so this communist minion could be installed. Thus the ‘last minute miracle’ victories the Dems are historically famous for. This communist minion is installed, and will follow his orders. They hope he’s smart enough to avoid Jussie… Read more »
Sadly, our “crux move” now is likely to leave our home city of over 50 years. The required changes of which you so eloquently speak, Matt, are true, every one. But being “senior citizens” ourselves, we don’t have the luxury of time for “wait & see” as a city that turned out at only 36% to vote at such a critical time comes to its senses. As we navigate th city, we are always looking over our shoulders & this kind of incessant vigilance is exhausting. Not to mention the State of Illinois & the symbiosis between it & the… Read more »
Karen, I concur with you 100%. Born at Michae Reese, working as an inner-city health care provider for most of my professional life without regards to color or socioeconomic status. Approaching retirement age, aside of the weather, it was the mostly peaceful riots here not once, but twice which pushed me over to buy a lot and now build a home in SW Florida. I’ve had two years to slowly process leaving the City that I had grown to love but will ultimately do so without regret.
Thanks, Steve. These decisions don’t come lightly & I envision a lot of discussion between my husband & me as to where we end up. We were so hopeful with this election that we kind of put this out of our minds – it was truly something we didn’t want to have to do. But it’s back now, front & center. Wishing you all the best as you begin anew in FL – good for you & Godspeed!
Thanks Karen and the same for you, your hubby and all of the other Chicagoans pondering such a move. Yes, Godspeed!
Been there. Suggest you start by giving away or throwing out things you never use. Start looking at states south of Illinois (assume you seek warmer weather). Keep in mind how often you might drive back to visit family or friends when selecting new location. I literally looked at the entire country before deciding on Tennessee a few years ago. (Wife thought Florida was too hot)
Good luck to you!
This city is done!!!!!!
The City fools and the State house fools are really both the same.
Chicago and Illinois are both headed for the crapper.
BJ is a CTU socialist sheeple!!
When Matt shared a draft of this column he asked for opinions on what image to use. “It should be your pick,” I said. I see what was a beacon of light now lonely and distant from city, but I leave it to you to decide.
That beacon is what is drawing IIlinoisans away from the coming train wreck.
Hi Mark and everyone. I’m still alive and well. Want to be the first to wish Happy Easter to all of you. Quick recap- I had 2 retina detachment surgeries in the same eye over the winter. The first held fine but somehow I started to develop scar tissue on the retina not far from the surgical repair and had to have a much more extensive surgery to repair in Jan.(just under 5 hours). I guess I heal too fast or something. All my blood work is near optimum. Doing fine now but will need another in Dec to take… Read more »
Hurray, Freddy! Lots of people here have been asking about you. I tried the email I thought was yours but didn’t hear back so we were worried. Glad all is well.
Glad you are healing and still among the living.
Chicago’s decline began decades ago. Daley Crime Family. Covert licensing of crimal behaviour. There is where the loyalty lies. Murder and theft were sanctioned as long as lieutenants and politicians were untouched. This was the reason that Federal authorities were unable to crack the Family. As long as members were living a good life everything was tight. It won’t change. It the same everywhere in the West.
I hope your next venture is uplifting.
The best of luck to you an your family in your next chapter. Dont look back to Chicago with a sigh and think it’s gonna fail you. It hasn’t, just those who continue to stay for another fight. Soon they will leave, because they, too are tired of all the rhetoric of hope. Whether you know it or not, you have given great incite in your writings. You make have introduced many good points that fall of politicians deaf ears. I will miss your articles and Wire Point will get another diamond in the rough writer like you. Good luck!!
Matt: I think draconian measures are needed to save Chicago. How do we “get back” the concept of personal responsibility? So glad I had the chance to live in downtown Chicago during 1979-1980. It was an exciting and safe time. Come on back to Seattle. We need your help to save this city, before it goes the way of Chicago.
“It was an exciting and safe time.” Do you think it was your perception that it was safer? Were you worried about the high number of murders in Chicago while you lived there? Chicago had 863 murders in 1980 vs 695 last year. Clearly Chicago’s violent crime has risen over the last twenty years but when people get nostalgic for the safety of the city in the 70’s through 90’s, I’m curious why they didn’t think crime was a problem back then but it is now. It certainly wasn’t a safer time. Maybe just youthful ignorance made you feel safer.… Read more »
A few reasons… First, crime was more confined and mostly gang related. Now, violent crime is everywhere. Second, you could count on the police and judicial system to deal with much of it. Now, everyone realizes the police are handcuffed (and attacked for doing their jobs) and the judicial system is a joke. I’m sure the police must think twice about when to get involved. For some reason, criminals are considered victims. Years ago, you could be out late and not worry as much. BTW, it’s not just Chicago that suffers from this, every other larger city with modern Democrats… Read more »
Context is important. First, the population has decreased from 1980 until now. Second, Trauma surgeons have vastly improved their craft. Look at the number of shootings not just murders for accuracy. That said, Chicago has always had to many violent encounters.
That was my point Steve. The city has always been violent and claiming that the city was safe in 1980 isn’t a genuine assessment but more about an individuals perspective about how they felt rather than actual crime statistics.
Was way safer in 1980 than it is today. It is not even intelligent to assert otherwise.
I just figured criminals were lousy shots. Can you imagine the homicide rate if they knew how to shoot better?