The Border War

Waiting for the Cartels' Shoes to Drop

Nearly two months ago I noted how freakily quiet it was out there in the world. Such a statement seems equally applicable today. While of course, Donald Trump’s first two weeks in office have been a humdinger blitz of good news for the right, the idea that the establishment deep state is rudderless, leaderless, and without a clear narrative with which to protest Trump remains true today as much as it did in December.

Stand By While We Reboot the Narrative

Sure there are still crazy narratives on Reddit, with tens of thousands of leftists sure that “any day now” Trump and all the Republicans will be removed from office by “committee proceeding” or “mass protest” or some combination of the two, while the country meanwhile is suffering through a dark Hitlerian fascist terror. On one particular subreddit, they still hold eternally faithful to their belief that the election was stolen from Kamala Harris by “Muskist Israeli Russian Collusion Electoral Fraud From Space.”

Sure there are also protests against the mass deportations (if they even merit the word massive yet, as they don’t seem that big yet to me). But, by and large, what

Mark Bisone

noted the day after November’s election continues to be true, the riot was never found:

The Riot Was Never Found

If Trump is Hitler, and his regime is fascist, where is the urgency, where are the mass protests, where are the freedom fighters right now? Who has assumed the grand responsibility of leading the resistance and what is their plan? The Trump supporter (or at least, as I consider myself, fellow traveler) hopes that it’s because the anti-Trump leftists have never believed their own propaganda. Perhaps their longstanding internal tensions, one hopes, are also splitting apart their response. Perhaps, one really hopes, one really really hopes, it’s because the left has already truly lost and knows it.

Or perhaps, more fearfully, it’s because while Trump has launched an opening salvo against every stronghold of blue/regime power to great visible effect, regime counterstrikes are launching right now, or are ready to, but just haven’t reached us yet or are waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

I’m loving it, I’m really loving it

Trump (and Musk, and intellectually, Vance) so far have launched attacks on the sources, funding, and symbols of regime power, from the FBI, DEI, and transgenderism, to the administrative state, the security state, the NGOs foreign and domestic, and importantly, the real institutions one needs to use to corral them, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management. Deportations (slower than I would hope), along with border security are both getting better, and Trump is also hard at work on the trade and international relations front boosting American honor and power (a little too hard at work, I fear).

With all this, one doubly wonders how they’re having so much success with so little visible opposition even with the usual media complaints and leftist tears.

Perhaps the reason is that it’s only been two weeks, and the regime agents haven’t yet fully internalized their loss of control—and financial loss—from the clean-up of government occurring right now. Perhaps they haven’t yet felt the pain from their being fired yet. But when they do feel it, and when certain other matters reach a head on the, say, immigration, border, and international relations fronts, all hell will break loose and the storm will truly be upon us.

John Stokes on X made a very good thread on this point of how millions of regime stooges are probably feeling right now:

First, there are a lot of people with platinum resumes & important titles who have worked their way up to the very top of the NGO/gov/blob career track, who are in their nice brownstone apartments or two-story homes dealing w/ total shell shock at some letter or email.

There is no plan B for their careers. They can't pivot into some other industry, they have no marketable skills beyond working in the parts of the blob apparatus that are on fire right now. This is the Palisades fire, but in DC -- total loss but no insurance or safety net.

This is a real, legit human tragedy just like the fire, & tho it's unpopular among many I know I do feel bad for them & their families. They've dedicated their lives to doing what they thought was right -- they just have a different idea of that right than me in some key ways.

So what do they do? Well, they have nothing left to lose. Absolutely nothing. It's YOLO time. So they will what they are good at: we are about to see a wave of letters to the editor, open letters, petitions, etc. from the most impressive names calling for military intervention.

I really do think in the coming week this is going to be a big deal. There will be open calls from people who very serious people, respected, long careers, saying the military must step in and arrest Musk & depose Trump.

Where it goes from there, I don't know. But the TL is about to get NUTS. This stuff from reddit & bsky is just the vanguard of what's next. We're going to see calls from the very top echelons for the security state to step in & do the thing on the grounds that we're in a crisis.

Me? I'm going back to keeping my head down. I got stuff to build. But it's going to be quite a show. And I'm not going to bother to try and game out what's downstream of that -- hopefully a nothingburger, but we'll see.

When you read one of these letters, imagine a man of ~50yrs in a nice apartment, wife is crying, kids in another room, stack of bills on the table (including inescapable permanent student loan debt), & it’s not just that he has lost his job — his entire career track is suddenly gone with zero warning. He is an elite who is facing what’s essentially refugee status. His whole network is in the same boat. Everyone he rubs shoulders with. In a past era, this was a “the city is being sacked & you must flee the rich quarters” type of situation. This man will use every means at his disposal to stop this chaos & return the cosmos to the order be knew just a week ago. Every means. And his network has his back. They’re all in this together. His means are the following: meetings, resolutions, open letters, public & private memoranda, leaks to friendly press, rumor, secrets, carefully guarded truths. He and his peers will deploy all of these in the days to come, and will do so maximally & without fear because no courage is required of them in this moment. The worst thing that could possibly happen has already happened in the form of a cheeky email from some twenty something DOGE kid. Screw this kid, right? Who the hell do these guys think they are? There’s no limiting principle at work on either side. The stakes are literally food & shelter. So that’s what we’re going to see reflected in the public discourse from people whose whole lives are the public discourse. As I said, the TL will be wild. Guard your sanity.¹

All the bureaucrats in and out of government losing their jobs, wealth, prestige, and power, or who at least fear that they could be next, have everything to lose from doing nothing, and nothing to lose from doing something.

Now by itself, I don’t fear the strongly worded letters that these guys are capable of. That’s all that most regime goons are capable of. They’re not particularly practically skilled, not particularly physically fit, and not particularly courageous. I fear (a little) the resources they will call upon if they feel embattled. The risk is that they call in their foreign auxiliaries (the drug cartels) and their local serfs² (illegal immigrants) to aid them.

But we’re defending the border and departing the illegal immigrants now you respond to me. Isn’t the problem going away?

Yes, but Trump is fighting on a lot of fronts right now, as Trump is also busy, diplomatically only for the moment, also fighting Canada, Mexico, China, and Denmark (and indirectly the European Union) and the cartels have started shooting at border patrol. Yes, we have somewhere around 4,000 soldiers deployed to the southern border, but it’s 1,951 miles long, making it, well, a pretty glaring risk at only two defending soldier per mile and a pretty bright target to cartels who are starting to feel a little pinched. Throw in the fact that while Pete Hegseth is off to a good start in the last week in cleaning up the military, there are still a good many leftist ideologues within its ranks that at least retard (get it) it’s operational preparedness.

Should something, err, larger, happen along the southern border, say the Sinaloa Cartel seizing a town or two in Texas or Arizona, what would happen, both domestically and internationally?

It sounds crazy, but a similar thing happened in 1915 during the Mexican Revolution when revolutionary leader (or warlord) Pancho Villa seized Columbus, New Mexico. The US Army responded by invading Mexico, admittedly somewhat half-heartedly with various expeditions over the next several years, and with, since this was all taking place during World War I, German soldiers aiding the Mexican forces. Ultimately, factional warfare within the Mexican Revolution ended the need for the inconclusive campaigns, but the precedent is there, and the border is not really all that better defended than back then, all things considered.

What’s worse, due to the cartels (and similar gangs) having a major presence within the United States through the illegal immigrants (and others who they’ve coerced into participation), that were something to happen on the southern border, they would have a lot of local help within America, and if the cartels launched something they would effectively pull the Mexican government, corruptly tied to them as it is, along with them against the United States.

And the cartels wouldn’t necessarily have to launch anything further than they already have to instigate a conflict. Secretary of Defense Hegseth, alongside Elon Musk, is already talking about sending special forces into Mexico because of the Cartels’ terrorist nature and—if one includes fetanyl—millions of associated deaths they’ve caused in America already.

So let’s game out what happens if a live conflict starts along the U.S./Mexico border. Suppose the Sinaloa Cartel of Mexico launches a raid, like an actual, mortars and guns blazing, tires screeching raid on Texas. Or suppose the U.S. launches an operation against the cartels. Suppose it leads to a few dozen dying on either side.

Either way, the cartels will feel the pressure and actively seek (if they haven’t already) to ally themselves with illegals in America, forcing or suggesting that they commit random acts of terror throughout the United States.

Trump and the Federal government, alongside state governors, will respond with a military force far stronger than the 4,000 soldiers currently deployed. We’d quickly see 50,000-100,000 National Guardsmen, regular Army, and Marines deployed to the border, as well, and this is the important one, deployed to guard and patrol U.S. cities against the cartel terrorism within America.

What happens next?

Well, the regime loyalists within the United States will—unless it burns down too many of their homes—love this. Finally, someone is fighting back against Trump. They’ll aid, abet, and support the cartels and the illegals in the “struggle against Hitler.” They’ll find a few patsies to help escalate the violence and will use the chaos to cover their tracks and entrench their power.

What happens internationally?

Well, this is a temporary boon to China, Russia, and other US adversaries.³ China will attack Taiwan and start actively sending more of their navy to Panama and thereabouts while Russia will do the same to Greenland, Alaska, and northern Canada. Canada, depending on the timing and outcome of their election, could even get involved on the side of the Mexican government (already tacitly if not yet openly involved) and offer aid, and even troops to “protect Mexico from the gringos.”

And so Trump will move from tariffing Mexico and Canada to sanctioning them, while left-wingers continue to erupt in screams, random acts of violence, and sabotage while right-wingers, with a new burst of patriotism, begin to look upon the Maple Leaf with something a little more vengeful than just scorn and laughter.

The stage is set for Trump to secure Panama—and to have to do so, due to the threat from the Mexican government becoming more and more like open warfare, while the Chinese navy threatens closer and closer to mainland America—and Gavin Newsom works on some sort of “deal” with them (also involving the EU).

It’s only May 2025.

The Southern U.S. border has become a free fire zone with several hundred thousand people having evacuated away from the region and regular artillery barrages going back and forth between dug-in positions of U.S. forces on one side and a mix of cartels, regular Mexican troops, and perhaps, it is rumored, Chinese “volunteers.”

They are being pushed back and pushed south. War has not officially been declared, but everyone knows it’s going on. America is winning, but it’s slow and grueling, and leftists and their NGOs and allies are trying to retard the U.S. progress and frustrate military operations as much as they can.

Trump sends a few Marines to Panama and Greenland.

Leftists freak out, but both are practically controlled within 48 hours, although local insurgencies are manifest in Panama, while domestic opposition within blue cities means that they are tenuously held, as some Democrat governors and mayors refuse to cooperate with Federal troops and may be trying to make side deals with the UK, China, and Mexico.

A rumor begins, and is soon confirmed, of a cartel operation, supported by Canadian (and perhaps UK…???) troops to terrorize the northern United States.

The US has by this time been in a tariff and trade war since February that Canada has been badly loosing, so they also feel like they have nothing to lose but to aid Mexico and the cartels and the illegals against the United States. They also have a lot of drug money to lose as the government, as

John Carter

has covered on X, is deep to its knees in trafficking and money laundering, so the Canadian elite, invested in this, needs to do “something.”

Trump has no choice, then, but to secure Canada…

A few days and a few quick mass surrenders of genderqueer CAF sergeants later and it’s June 2025 and the northern border is now secure. However, there are still millions of illegal immigrants and millions of regime goons in the United States, multiple foreign threats that need to be solved, as well as millions of dangerous domestic extremists still ideologically bound to the old regime…

Multiple timelines diverge… Will Trump be a gracious Caesar or a vengeful Sulla?

That’s what they could be planning. I hope not. I love the victories of the last two weeks. But we must be prepared for the worst. The regime, whether with their domestic goons or with their foreign auxiliaries, won’t go down without a fight.

Perhaps the battle will be purely domestic and fought between leftist apparatchiks fighting to access their offices—or break into a CVS.

But at a certain point, since it is at its heart an inter-elite fight with infinite stakes for both sides, it will come to something, and it will, ultimately, for good or for ill, involve our neighbors and involve some actual, real, fighting within America.

It will be The Border War.

And Trump will cross it. And we’d all better hope he wins. It will be mostly a good thing, but there will be some downsides too.⁴

Because if Trump doesn’t win. If the regime comes back, then well, it ain’t pretty.

It all depends on how lazy the regime apparatchiks are. We think they’re complete lazy slobs. They act that way, surely. We’d better hope it’s not just an act.

P.S. The Downsides

Destroying the regime is good, but we have imported a little of it into the MAGA coalition through the transhumanist globalist tech bros, who are aligned right now, but might not necessarily be so in the future.

Furthermore, realpolitik would suggest that if we do create a fortress North America, we are still not out of global geopolitics as we will share a huge Arctic border with Russia and Europe and will have to be even more involved in affairs in at least those regions even if it does mean we can leave the Middle East. It all reminds me of the troubles faced by the Romans. In trying to conquer their way to a defensible border they kept running into new enemies on the new frontiers.

Furthermore, there are many moral downsides to an imperial future, as my recent post on the New American Empire argues:

See my post on Trump as the opposite of Hitler for even more potentia downsides:

and this for the mixed long-term view on where we’re headed:

1. https://x.com/jonst0kes/status/1885721635493142889

2. Sadly that is what the blue regime (and establishment Republicans) want them for, as serfs to pick the food, build the homes, and shine the shoes.

3. But only temporary. Watch out for the North American Fortress of the post-war United States nation. It’s a fortress, but it will need to defend its new borders.

4. Suppose things escalate further, and Trump, rather than just aiming to deport illegal immigrants decides to say, open uh, we’ll call it an uh … concentration camp because they are all very real threats to the lives of Americans. Suppose an armed rebellion breaks out within one of these camps. And then Trump orders the military to respond. And millions die. All of these steps plausibly follow each other, and, unfortunately, seem quite possible. Such a chain of events does bring about a possible future potential Trump who seems very similar to Hitler. Unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless