How Utah’s fear-driven politics is reshaping courts and elections

By: Lisa Stoddard-Reeves

Outlets: Utah News Dispatch

Published: February 11, 2026

Words: 715

Last Updated: 2 weeks, 6 days ago

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What we are watching in Utah is not new. It’s the state-level expression of a national political theology decades in the making — one that claims to fear authoritarianism while steadily normalizing it. Fear is politically useful. It can magnify perceived threats and recast the exercise of power as morally necessary.

We can laugh now at the moral panics of the past. In the 1980s, people warned that “Stairway to Heaven” contained …

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