i was talking with my friend at open produce this morning about the march for our lives. all last night i was feeling bad about it, and about the argument that followed with r. i started by praising the kids, but we quickly moved on to our misgivings. in such a desperate plight as this, the present debacle of democracy in america, we all are hungry for some hope, and some good feeling, some antidote to despair. but what we were seeing yesterday left me feeling uneasy. the march was sanitized, co-opted, stage managed and monitored for content. it was made for tv, and i felt the kids were seduced by the spectacle they were given to create. i'm not even sure what incrementalism means, but it does not satisfy. i think it means now is not the time. now is not the time to talk about the j.r.o.t.c. training kids to kill in schools, though it may be the time to talk of arming teachers. i can't argue that banning assault weapons would be a good start, a laudable increment, yet it won't change the state of violence, of corporate coercion and corruption, of endless war. i felt bad for the kids who had been under lock-down waiting to see who would survive. because the rally seemed more like a political event, they kept repeating almost with commercial regularity, the mantra, we will vote you out, and i felt like this was television, not revolution. in the end i feel some disappointment but no surprise. it's in the nature of a mass event in america that it will be controlled by the law, made palatable for the mass consumer. as the old song goes, and it is ever more true, the revolution will not be televised. and it won't be accomplished by the vote, as long as democracy is incorporated. the revolution will not be incorporated. will there be a revolution? it must, inevitably, because democracy as spectacle and masquerade, with thoughts and prayers and hope and change as we continue to destroy the earth, cannot and will not last. when i think back on it, the best moment was when that girl vomited on the podium. that got the closest to the gut feeling i have about guns and children and the culture of death.