Problem 1: Calling the president of Mexico "cute" just because she is a woman.
Problem 2: Implying Claudia is "owned" by the Cartels, when she has consistently said that her goal is to address the underlying economic issues that cause criminal drug trafficking activity rather than escalating police violence in a futile effort to treat its symptoms, in the performative way American politicians do.
Problem 3: Implying Claudia is "owned" by Blackrock even though her new tariffs would harm Blackrock financially.
Problem 4: Implying Claudia is "owned" by China despite them playing no role in getting her elected and despite China's overall trade with Mexico being far less than the volume of trade they do with the United States.
Problem 5: Implying that Latin American drug cartels, the Blackrock corporation, and the Chinese Communist Party all have the SAME goals, which they bribe politicians to achieve.
Problem 6: Ignoring the fact that 99% of global north politicians are ACTUALLY controlled by corporate donors like Blackrock.
Problem 7: Naming your Twitter profile "The Investigative Centurion." My brother in Jupiter, Centurions were dumb fighting machines sent to Germany to bash in the skulls of tribal warlords so that senators and patricians in Rome could continue to profit off the exploitation of the peasant farmers and common soldiers.
Problem 8: Paying for a blue checkmark on Twitter.
the China is making Mexico do cartel terrors to America's Freedom on the Border is absolutely a narrative being pushed in popular fictional media.
backstory:
i am a cultural slop pig. i watch the shit out of spy thrillers, provided they have spectacle worthy production value, tight direction, and some dramatic tension. i always have, even when my politics were shitty/incoherent. hell, they probably led to me having shitty takes, because so much of american media is heavily influenced by the NatSec / Military community. anyway, my politics don't suck, but i am a pig so i watch the shit.
among the most recent Taylor Sheridan properties to be developed for Paramount+ is this series called "Lioness". it's got Zoe Saldana in it as the lead who manages this like clandestine force inside the state department of women deep cover/long term infiltration/assassination agents. it's got some other marquee star power in it: Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Kelly (you'll know the face if not the name). this is S-tier prestige slop for me. and while Sheridan historically flirts and skirts overtly fash themes in his works, the action is high octane (i like TV that gives me anxiety) and he usually frustrates and complexes portraits of american life with critiques of what lies beneath (racism, genocide, capitalist extraction). i think he absorbed some talent from working with Denis Villaneuve on Sicario on how to pace movies and more importantly build tension in scenes, but unfortunately lost or ignored Denis' deeper insight.
anyway, apologies for the long justification of my watching this shit, but we're into S2 of Lioness and holy shit the overarching plot is INSANE. literally, the state department "knows" the PRC's MSS is pushing "the mexican government" to use the "cartels" to probe and test US national security responses to overt political violence on the US side of the mexico border. i shit you not, the season opens with a highly professional cartel death/capture squad breaking into a US congresswoman's home in south texas in the middle of the night, murdering her husband and two small children, and kidnapping her to torture her back across the mexico border. (the action sequence is legit crazy). the state department briefs the president that it's obviously PRC MSS probing us to see how the US will respond. no evidence for this is presented, it's just stated and accepted. i wondered if maybe this was a setup for some future reveal that the bosses are just making shit up, but by all accounts halfway through the season its being played this way. still no hard evidence of china being at all involved, but they are running this entire crazy longshot cartel infiltration operation to find out who the MSS contact is in mexico running this and then put them in the ground to "send a message" back to Beijing. seriously, outside of the action sequences and minutae of the plot, when they stop back to give an update on the bigger picture, i feel like the story is actually making me dumber. also, Taylor wrote himself into this one too as an "aging operator" type of guy who is cool because "beware the old man in a dangerous job". like, kudos to writing yourself into your own series so you can double dip the payroll and get your meals/workouts to get all jacked covered as compensated work time, but seriously STFU with that role. thankfully it was just a 2 ep miniarc. that's almost as bad as Shyamalan writing himself as having the role of a visionary writer / prophet / savior of humanity in Lady in the Water. like how does one even walk around with a head that big?
anyway, there's obvious evidence of the NatSec/Mil collaboration with this series. tons of shots from military bases with lots of wide angle shots of military equipment, gear, etc. so it's a straight line to say this plot arc was accepted if not bespoke crafted for their approval.
so yeah, this Mexico is China's Client State and the Cartels Are Its Loyal Paramilitary is a specific narrative being pushed by the superstructure.
Can't wait to see the next CoD Modern Warfare game where they fight in Mexico, but since latinos are too "dumb" to actual plot anything. It is discovered that it were the Chinese behind it all. (Just like how in CoD4 the fight arabs, but it was the damn Russians behind it all. And I guess the Russians also had somehow allied themselfs with Brazilian drug dealers who fight US soldiers in Rio. One of the largest cities on the planet, and theres no Brazilian cop or Soldier in sight, despite in rl there being like 5 Army Bases in there, the city was the literal capital of Brazil until the 1960's)
I think in one of those Call of Juarez games, it takes place in modern times, like 2009, and they fucking portray the cartels as these giant terrorist organization that kidnaps and enslaves white women. Fucking absurd shit.
Thank you for taking the slop bullet for the rest of us.
It makes sense that the USA State Department would want to 1) exacerbate the "problems" at the Mexican border and then 2) blame that all on China. Obviously we're not going to invade Mexico any time soon, but some kind of proxy war with China seems likely. Or at least, the threat of a conflict with China will become the main thing driving the USA's military-industrial complex in the mid-to-long term.