Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno read a roll call of torture victims he said were on hand at the council meeting, and as the men and their relatives stood in the gallery, aldermen turned and gave them an ovation.
"This is truly an historic day for Chicago, for this City Council and most importantly for the victims of some horrific behavior that happened right here in Chicago," said Moreno, 1st. "Not in Iraq, not in Syria, but right here in Chicago." Chicago Tribune
History, after all, consisted of an unbroken succession of rulers, leaders, bosses, and commanders who with extremely rare exceptions had all begun well and ended badly. All of them, at least so they said, had striven for power for the sake of the good; afterward they had become obsessed and numbed by power and loved it for its own sake. Hermann Hesse from The Glass Bead Game
After World War II anthropologists discovered that an unusual religion had developed among the islanders of the South Pacific. It was oriented around the concept of cargo which the islanders perceived as the source of the wealth and power of the Europeans and Americans. This religion, known as the Cargo Cult, held that if the proper ceremonies were performed shipments of riches would be sent from some heavenly place. It was all very logical to the islanders. The islanders saw that they worked hard but were poor whereas the Europeans and Americans did not work but instead wrote things down on paper and in due time a shipment of wonderful things would arrive.
The Cargo Cult members built replicas of airports and airplanes out of twigs and branches and made the sounds associated with airplanes to try to activate the shipment of cargo. San Jose State University
With the unanimous approval of all 50 Chicago Alderman, the Burge Mythology was elevated from a yarn repeatedly told in courtrooms hand-picked by The Peoples Law Office, aped incessantly from pages of Mother Jones, Chicago Reader, The Daily Worker, by the Chicago newspapers, WTTW and eventually the three news channels, in classrooms occupied by group-thought instructors and eaten like Haagen Dazs by generations of young people was elevated to State Worship as Chicago's Official Cargo Cult.
Artifacts and personalities around Jon Burge evolved into what Francis Bacon called Idols of the Tribe - abstractions in error arising from common tendencies to exaggeration, distortion, and disproportion.
Though no Chicago Police Officer, or any member of his/her extended family has ever been proven to have committed any act of torture upon any human being, black, white, brown, yellow, red or rainbow hued, it is now the official doctrine that a Midnight Crew tortured black men 24/7 between the late 1970's and New Millennium.
The Chicago City Council without any balanced consideration of the Burge Myth ( where were the studies of Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist William Crawford, or auth Martin Preib in the discussions?), one side of story received a unanimous vote.
Well meaning and good people have been confused by very clever and not very good people to accept a new certainty that police officers, motivated only by systemic racism tortured and falsely arrested Chicago black men.
That belief is no different from the people of England accepting Henry VIII as the sole Head of the Church of England and Successor to Saint Peter, because Parliament went along with Henry's gonads with an Act of Supremacy.
Likewise, Cargo Cult People after WWII.
The Indigenous Peoples of the South Pacific waited in abandoned towers on New Guinea for the return of the powerful gods from the skies to land on the jungle over-grown airfields that onec upon a time brought gifts of Spam, cigarettes, candy, GI socks and undies, batteries, jeeps and tents.
Way to go Chicago Aldermen!
Get up in your towers and wait for what will happen.
