My parents winter in Puerto Vallarta. Have for years.

They are currently barricaded in their condo, the military keeping rebels from entering their property.

They have food and power, and have taken in 2 women who were stranded.

The street below, usually buzzing with life,…

— OveralledFolksKell (@BlueCollarKell) February 23, 2026

This morning, on SiriusXM’s Patriot radio, Mike Slater had on his Breitbart colleague, Brandon Darby, who is a journalist focused on documenting the cartels.

Based on what Darby described in detail, this recent upsurge of violence in México can technically be blamed on Trump, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. The Trump Administration was fed up with the endless, decades long violence and corruption south of the border and decided to do something about it. Yes, there is going to be ongoing violence for a period of time, but what’s the alternative? Let El Mencho and other gangsters control the people of México forever?! According to the likes of many Democrats and Canadians I know, that is the preferable route because actually trying to regain the rule of law is “too extreme”.

When good men & women refuse to stand up to bad actors, society deteriorates. This is what has happened in Canada, in Vancouver, in California, and in San Francisco. To date, the majority of folks in these places have refused to stand up against the destructive forces. If one “dares” disagree with this deterioration, years can be spent trying to fight back, or one can leave and find sanity elsewhere.

An SDA regular from Ontario corresponds with me regularly. Here’s a little missive he sent from México and gave me permission to share:

We are spending a few weeks in the sun again. By my wife’s count, this our 7th trip to Mexico. Over that thirty-plus years there was always a pronounced Canadian presence at our Mexican vacation spots — and so it is this time as well. But apparently, according to virtually every Canadian we run into, things are very different this year.

We are told that there has been a huge increase in Canadians on the Mayan Riviera this year because, wait for it, “they’re not going to Florida anymore”. This news is invariably delivered with a smug happiness, as “we sure showed him, eh?”

We have heard this dozens of times, and we respond to it with a few quick follow-up questions. “Is this your first time here?” “Oh no, we’ve been coming here for five (or twenty) years”. “So, did you vacation in Florida last year?” “No.” The smarter ones see the contradiction between fact and their narrative and change the subject or, get sour and terminate the conversation. The others try a different tack: asserting that it’s the Quebec traffic that’s waaaay up — at which point I invite them to speculate how much of that might be due to the Quebecois abandonment of Cuba over the past year or so.

A week or so ago, my wife was explaining where our home town was to a poolside Karen who loudly exclaimed – Americans within earshot – that “Any place in Canada is a great place to be.” I told her we had friends in Brampton who would disagree. She has (mercifully) ignored us ever since.