Brandon Darby went to help in post-Katrina, and by all reports did a remarkable job, but once his superhero role necessarily evolved into a day-to-day grind of emptying sh** buckets, dealing with tourist activists and literally mending fences, he got bored. He tried to enlist the "real revolutionaries" but is soon disillusioned by them. He drops out. But then he drops back in, this time with the FBI. But it's still Brandon trying to be a superhero, and to do that he needs a few super villains. And so the downward spiral begins.

What I found most fascinating is the fantasy that penetrates all of these people (right, left and law enforcement), how those fantasies can lead to disastrous consequences and how ego can rationalize it all.

There's a certain tragedy in Brandon's very small progress of stabbing in the dark at what he believes is the enemy; in one case resulting in great good and in another, ruining lives, but he can't connect the dots. He can't see how he takes one side of an ambiguous coin today, and the other side tomorrow, all the while mistaking his waffling for insight. And few around him seem to get it either: the radicals and their fair trade coffee coops, or the law enforcement looking to make their conviction numbers and "do their part" in post-911 America. In the end, Brandon simply idealizes and does whatever he thinks will most impress those he's surrounded by at the moment, and the only conclusion I can draw from that is he's either easily manipulated or morally bankrupt.