The Badass

[Eric Rosenbloom]

    "Give me liberty, or give me death."

          --Patrick Henry, 23 March 1775

This seems relevant to what The Badass is up to. In his Luddite essay,
Pynchon makes the distinction between the usual understanding of a
revolution as one that brings a new dispensation of broader
participation in rights of property and law, such as the American and
French ones, and the "Industrial Revolution", which was a long process
of consolidating ownership by the few. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
of the Chiapas uprising in Mexico said recently that he has no interest
in becoming a part of the government, that he is a rebel not a
revolutionary. And there's yer Badass: Where there is no revolution, or
a false revolution, or a revolution against the people, or a failure of
the revolution for many, you need the rebel, The Badass. Pynchon: "When
times are hard, and we feel at the mercy of forces many times more
powerful, don't we, in seeking some equalizer, turn, if only in
imagination, in wish, to the Badass -- the djinn, the golem, the hulk,
the superhero -- who will resist what otherwise would overwhelm us?"

Blicero does not resist the forces of death, and his "equalization" of
those forces only puts them in order. Only Gottfried stays with him, and
that poor boy is not a little brainwashed I think. Blicero is not a
rebel against, but the very spirit of white death. There is no desire
for liberty, no dream of a new dispensation except that of the Reich
itself, to be the master of all we fear, to be a death machine.

The Badass may seek death, but it is to assert the human (animal) when
that is not allowed.

--
Eric R



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