Spicy take: the cartels are fish that swim just fine in the waters of Mexico but wouldn’t stand a chance against even a mild response by US LE or people.

Mafias rely on ethnic homogeneity and a baseline level of pre-existing retail-level corruption. Given those two things they can be incredibly hard to eradicate but without those two things they are like fish trying to colonize land.

Imagine cartels trying to take over Oklahoma City, a city with decent but not huge immigrant populations, one state away from the border.

This is a city where in living memory people put a gun turret on a liquor store to keep the mob out. And if that story is apocryphal, the video tape of a pharmacist straight up executing a man who tried to rob him is not. The American Dream is going weapons free on your own land.

Say what you will about the rise of the warrior cop: the thin blue line would love to roll moar APCs through drywall. Young bored police want this, they need it.

Sure, cartels can commit atrocities. Lot easier to do when you live and eat and sleep and work with your victims. Lot easier when everybody is on the take and thus you already have leverage on everybody.

I am very against war and very pessimistic about any sort of actual intra-American civil war but...the cartels aren’t it, Chief. If anything, a couple atrocities would incite an overwhelming immune response.

If you disagree please cite any example of a mafia expanding *violently* into a larger and ethnically non-identical landscape.