Nationwide discrimination against itself
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4.5
Zeitoun is your typical friendly and kind neighbor operating a local painting sole proprietorship. A father of two lovely daughters and a husband whose wife has a strong will and heart.
It's probably Zeitoun's sense of belonging that made him stay disregarding the imminent landfall of the dangerous hurricane Katrina or perhaps it's because Zeitoun did not want to leave his life's work behind. He has been helping neighbors and strangers with his second hand canoe and never once thought about his act as heroic or showoff. He also did not anticipate to be the scapegoat of a natural disaster, wrongly accused of theft and inhumanely incarcerated without fair trial. Under his wife and brother's relentless pursuit of justice, he's finally released and his life went back to normal but never the same as before. Although, after all the tragedy and injustice, he would still not be hesitated ride his canoe and lend a helping hand to any one in need.
We are so easily manipulated when we feel unified with others. Gustave Le Bon's
written over a century ago still applies today.
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.
The work of a crowd is always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual.
This is a nation led discrimination hidden under the disguise of patriotism.
With the war against terrorism freshly declared the year before, the media's overreaction was overwhelming. Illusions were supplied that the nation was constantly under attack. Every piece of breaking news tended to be associated with the fight against terrorism and the Muslims fitting the general media profile of the typical offenders. They fell as the antagonists to blame by the whole nation. And yet the majority of Muslims are brought up to know just like what's described in the book.
God hates as much as anything is waste. It was, he had been told, one of the three things God most hated: murder, divorce, and waste. It destroyed a society.
The author's argument echoed with me that Zeitoun's selfless actions did not deserve the hate and discrimination brought against him and his society, which is the representation of the entire nation's core, the coexistence of the multi-culture.
