The exterior of the Eldon B. Mahon U.S. Courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas, seen during the Prairieland protest trial on March 9, 2026. Photo: Matt Sledge/The Intercept Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday.
A printing press.
That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.
Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside Prairieland Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.
The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the anti-ICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to criminalize protest.
I mean, I kind of wish that would be the scenario. That would be doing what Covid didn’t.
That’s definitely the scenario. It’s not going to be just Trump supporters, but making pro-war military propaganda an inescapable aspect of civilian life is meant to help normalize forever wars.
If you grow up knowing nothing but a world where forever war is the norm, and a dictator just does whatever the fuck he wants, then by comparison whatever Trump, (or Vance, or Rubio, or Hegseth, or whoever the next polished turd is that oligarchs choose to be his replacement), does next, always seems a little less outrageous than what he did the time before. It just becomes the new normal.
It’s hard to believe there are some people who honestly think there’s just no way Trump (or whoever is next) would reinstate the draft because it would be “political suicide.” People would be out in the streets again.
I remember hearing my parents and older family members saying shit like that. They also didn’t think there would be any way Roe vs. Wade would be overturned in their lifetime. Or that America would ever see a repeat of something like Kent State. But it happened. It just becomes the new normal.
Iran looked very different before the CIA intervened (the first time). We were always told that the religious fundamentalism that took hold was a consequence of a failed U.S. intervention, but I’m pretty sure things went according to somebody’s plan.
It’s never been that religious fundamentalism (in Iran or the U.S.) is actually important to the religious values of those who use it to control others. It’s important to preserving a conservative heirarchy. The Americans who created the Iranian revolution viewed themselves as Gods (or at least as close to God as humanly possible within the heirarchy of humans) meant to control and lead the rest of society. They recognized a long time ago that religion and nationalism are simply the tools that enable them to shape and control a society into their image.
Tldr: You might not fall for the propaganda, but keep in mind that others will. Once they get to a certain point of enmeshment, it becomes like trying to bring a brainwashed cult member back to reality.
God didn’t make man in his image, we made god in our image, because we believe ourselves to be gods. It was always a worship of hierarchy and “the Man”.
Maybe? And I mean that maybe as sincerely as any maybe can be. I don’t believe myself to be a god, and I would like to see these so called “natural” hierarchies toppled.
However, I know what you mean and why you would feel that way. That is definitely the belief of the men who use religion to control others, but I think there’s a lot more to human spiritualism and religion than just man made hierarchies. That is kind of a separate point, but it gets down to the basic question of why spiritualism and religion even exist as human behaviors?
There does seem to be evidence that humans are sort of hard wired to seek a spiritual or higher power. This drive can leave humans vulnerable to manipulation when it comes to authoritarianism, in-group/out-group dynamics, and group think. But, there’s also some evidence that in certain situations, the same drive can have positive effects and may even be beneficial to individual survival and motivation.
Personally, I believe it boils down to a question of seeking out others who are willing to just give you the answer in exchange for handing over your own autonomy vs. reflecting on what a religion teaches, combining that with your own knowledge and experience, and then looking within yourself for your own answers.
One of those options is much easier to default to than the other, especially if you have a charismatic authority figure offering those answers, leading a group of your peers, asking you to join.
If you default to the easy option, it can provide some social support/comfort and a sense of community. However, once you’re fully entrenched in the social/in-group aspect of a religion, it’s easy to stop reflecting within to consider if what you’re doing lines up with your own reality and beliefs about right vs. wrong. It’s easier to just obey the leader and follow along with others. It also becomes easier to misplace the blame on to yourself if you do notice any conflicts between what a “religious authority” is ordering you to do and your own moral compass.
Abrahamic religions all have overlap in the core principles that are most often associated with each of those 3 religions: obedience to one god, blind faith, and abiding by a set of rules to appease that God. However, each of those religions also share overlap between other human focused core values that more often than not just get brushed aside.
I know more about Christianity than I do Jewish or Islamic faiths, so I’ll just stick with Christianity as the example even though it could be applied to all 3. It’s not really surprising to me that the core tenets most often ignored in Christianity (love and empathy) are the tenets that conflict with “Christianity®️” as a means to control others. It’s not like Christ placed those tenets lower on some list of priorities. In fact, he even says that all of the other laws hang on the greatest commandment: love for God and love for thy neighbor.
So, how and more importantly why would the greatest commandment of Jesus Christ end up getting knocked so far down on the priority list of rules for Christians to obey? Does it conflict with being a Christian or does it conflict with being controlled?