A group of Navy SEALS may have stormed a Pakistani garrison town and taken off the top of Bin Laden's head, but he still lives on in the heads of the political establishment. The big Bin Laden has gone to feed the sharks, but it is the little Bin Laden who dictated that he receive a Muslim burial, forbade the release of the death photos and warned off the town of Virginia Beach from celebrating their hometown heroes.
It was never the big Bin Laden that the West was afraid of, but the little one. A small turbaned figure that sits in the heads of the establishment and drives its officials and legislators to wonder if they have somehow upset the Muslims this day.The big Bin Laden could never have imprisoned an American in his own country for even thinking about protesting a mosque. Not with any amount of death or carnage. The big Bin Laden could never have gotten newspapers to refuse to print the Mohammed cartoons. He could kill us, but he could never make us censor ourselves. But the little one sitting in the worried heads of newspaper editors pulled it off. The big Bin Laden could have have normalized the groping of children in airports as a substitute for profiling Muslims, but the little Bin Laden always whispering about how dangerous it is to offend Muslims can convince us to do anything.
At the conclusion of 1984, Winston Smith wins a victory over himself by coming to love Big Brother. But there is no Big Brother. He is the mythical personification of the party. The collectivist side of every individual in Oceania. By giving in to it, Smith destroys the individual part of himself. He blissfully commits suicide because he can no longer believe in the virtue of resistance. Big Brother did not exist. It was that little Big Brother who haunted Smith.
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