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Welcome to the Eric Matexas show with your host Eric Matexas

Well there folks I have the privilege of speaking to a native Chicago end you know what that is that somebody who who's lived in Chicago for a long time his name is Matt Rosenberg the book is what next

Chicago notes of a pissed off native son wow Matt Rosenberg welcome to the program thank you Eric it's a pleasure to be here I know of you because of your dad the legendary

Milton Rosenberg my goodness how long did he do radio I mean how many years was he in that world 38 years he was on WGNAM but it was just a second job

what was his first job he was a professor of social psychology at the University of Chicago and I grew up in Hyde Park and a professor of social psychology with common sense

and the great curiosity which I think he passed on at least partially to me so you've been a journalist you've done a lot of things this book I mean everybody in the country including some Chicago winds are wondering what in the world is happening in Chicago so what is the book about what next Chicago what what ultimately are you saying here

I'm addressing urban progressive misrule in our nation's biggest cities I'm looking at the unified theory of systemic racism and positing that that is not the problem that the problem is that urban political elites largely of color are running our nation's biggest cities into the ground what I'm also trying to do in this book

deep into the south side I move back to Chicago where I live for 30 years from the time of being a young child six years old to you know my mid 30s when I finally left and moved to Seattle with my lovely wife where we raised two children I had to come back in 2020 looking at the city in chaos and turmoil

I went deep into the south side talk to black people in their homes and workplaces about what's gone wrong how to set things right so that was a big part of it but then the policy piece Eric was very big and I felt don't shy away from this how is it that the public schools are failing how is it that the criminal court system has run off the rails how is it that fiscal governance has gone so wrong why is it going to be a problem

why is it that corruption is endemic and the rules of governance are rigged so it was ambitious but I feel like I had a chance to step up to it

I mean I have to ask the face of Chicago a last and a lack has been Mayor Lori Lightfoot who seems to project a kind of confusion

I don't know if that's just her resting face but she just looks confused and lost unfortunately that doesn't seem inappropriate her leadership and I'm using that word in quotes has been to most of us at least mystifying

you're really trying to wonder what in the world anybody with a modicum of common sense would have done many things differently it's almost as if she's not doing anything I guess she reminds me of Biden in some ways I mean I can't really make sense of how things can be falling apart in that way and how somebody like that cannot even seem to be addressing it on any level I hope I'm misreading some of that but what is your sense of what is happening

she's badly overwhelmed she's floundering she's intelligent and capable and had a fairly impressive career leading up to this including working as a federal prosecutor in Chicago and actually putting corrupt Chicago alderman and jail in a few instances

University of Chicago law grad elected I know it's utterly but I wish she's brilliant and floundering I think there was this crucial inflection point and it tells us something about our times in 2020 after George Floyd with COVID

there was a crucial inflection point where you find out whether people who are capable intelligent and well tested previously whether they can step up under unusual circumstances where you know the heat under the pot with the boiling frogs in it is all of a sudden turned up

and she has literally gone to pieces in front of the city and in front of the nation and has fallen back among other things on this saw this refrain that systemic racism is to blame for every problem the violent crime the higher murder rates among blacks it's as if black on black crime we're not a legitimate issue as if

black being racist when they're killing other blacks black people are be funneled by this when I went into this outside I had one woman a woman of grit of faith religious faith and an entrepreneur woman named Latasha fields one of several success stories that I share in the book say to me

literally you know you need to explain something to us black people we hear this phrase black lives matter but do they only matter when a white policeman takes a black life and you know some of this goes back to the stoic philosophers who who counseled among other things that you choose how you react to something if your honor is affronted by somebody you can either get and they said this in their

own way but it translates to you can either get bent out of shape or you can accept this with equanimity because it's not something you can do a great deal about and you can prove your honor through your daily actions and your daily life in

Chicago we have people pulling out guns and firing them because of something somebody says at a party you know because of minor disagreements or in this takes you deep into the strange subculture of gang life there is now a style of rap video called Chicago drill most unfortunately named it as certain distinguishing musical features but the main aspect of the

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