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I can't quite put my finger on moments like yours, but had the same strange sensation of creeping revulsion toward NPR, where it once felt like a safe, familiar, even comforting, thing.

NPR, in a million ways small and large, carries water for the status quo, and it's fuckin gross. Even just small ongoing things like their current phrasing "the war in Iran". It's an anodyne, neutral phrasing used in their broadcasts, seemingly as a rule. Same neutral language for cops when "an assailant was shot and died", or when "a weapon discharged", etc.

It's never the war against Iran, it's not "the unprovoked attack against Iran", etc., it's just this vague inscrutable thing merely happening, and merely in Iran. No one is responsible, and it just is there. And thankfully, it's only IN Iran! Wouldn't it be worse if that were spilling over into other places and things?

There are countless stronger examples, but this one is current and consistent and you can hear it in any random news broadcast, and it tells a huge lie in a tiny word every time.

Freakonomics was a big breaking point for me too. I used to think it was really cool, and even read the first book! But there was an argument in it that stuck with me, and was sort of the marquee analysis for the show for a long time.

It went something like, in the 90s there was all this fuss about super-predators, urban youths who would grow up without stable families and surrounded by gang violence, and they would basically never develop a conscience, and you'd have a generation of killers that made the cities unliveable. Apparently this was something Killary stumped about but I remember it being all over the news at one point. So why did this never occur? Because this generation would be the first who grew up with favorable laws and views toward abortion, so women were able to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

And at first I was pretty amazed at this, I was like, wow aren't liberal reforms great? But after reading and learning and thinking more about the world I realized what I wish was obvious: there never was a threat of "super predators," these people are just incredibly racist, and the freakonomocs team were fucking hacks.

Then one day I was picking my kids up and listening to Elliot Abrams on freah air or some shit speaking in dulcet tunes about the necessity to invade Venezuela. Another segment on Wait wait don't tell me was about a precision missle that could precisely target a particular person, and they made a joke about how the missle could fly so close to the target that samurai swords would pop out and slice up the terrorist. Queue hysterical laughter.

And that was it, I realized these people are the most bloodthirsty fucking freaks imaginable. People who sounded smart to sell massacres and racism to dumb idiots, like myself at one point, to middle brow pseudo intellectuals who didn't really pay attention, just wanted to feel good about being informed while learning nothing.

Once you see how NPR is just dripping in gore, you can't unsee it