Episode #27 of the Bewildered Herd Podcast honors its name—and then some. The cast is a perfect civic dysfunction sampler platter: Earl (MC/producer, occasional right-wing propaganda connoisseur), GR (a true believer in democracy and the rule of law), and Daz—bless his soul—who refuses to be pinned down politically and is “off the rockers” with his allegedly deranged ideas like defunding the police and ICE.
They dig into the origins of ICE and the aftershocks of Renne Good’s execution at their hands, then pivot to how the administration follows a page from the Israeli playbook: demonize the victim, launder the narrative, and call it “restoring order.” At press time, they’re doing the same to Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who was—because we live in a serious country—shot five times by armed buffoons who had been dog-pilling on him. Daz points out the quiet part out loud: we know these names because they’re white. There have been plenty of other unworthy victims—men of color—whose deaths never sparked the righteous fury of white liberals, because apparently the news cycle has a melanin filter.
The Herd circles the big question: is this what MAGA voters wanted? A city under quasi-military occupation, masked goons in civilian clothes patrolling the streets with semi-automatic weapons like it’s a dystopia cosplay convention? Is this evidence the Empire is falling? Chicken Little says yes, the sky is falling, stock up on canned beans. But honestly—who knows.
Earl, ever the reassuring voice from the back of a hostage van, insists that “law-abiding citizens should be fine.” Which is comforting until you remember the number of American citizens detained by ICE because they were racially profiled. Earl gets especially heated when the conversation traces policing back to slave catchers, and when Daz argues—wild stuff—that security apparatuses tend to oppress racialized minorities. Earl then slides into some premium victim-blaming: the “defund the police” people basically asked for this level of repression. At this rate, he’ll be telling us prisons aren’t racist institutions perpetuating coerced labor—people of color just love crime, obviously. We’re losing him to the MAGA crowd in real time, folks.
The best moment hits around the hour mark, when Daz—again, bless his soul—drops historical context on Earl’s head like a piano: the Insurrection Act has a long history of being used to crush labor rebellions and keep oligarch business interests nice and stable. Earl goes nuclear. It’s fantastic.
Meanwhile, GR, ever the idealist, offers reformism as a solution: ICE can be fixed the way police departments have been (have they?): no masks, body cams, clearly labeled identification. His theory is basically: “What if we made the machine more polite?” He thinks the system can be salvaged. For the sake of the children—or at least whatever’s left of the social contract—we all hope he’s right, and that the empire isn’t sinking while dragging half the world down with it.
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