Reflections

Laundry in the Apocalypse

How I Respond to Kabuki Theatre

On February 22nd 2026, media reported that El Mencho - a cartel leader based in Jalisco, Mexico - had been captured and killed during a joint US-Mexico military operation. This coincided with a spate of arson and shootings in Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, the two major cities in Jalisco, reported to be a retaliation by the cartels at the actions of the military.

I was in Puerto Vallarta on the 22nd February. The first thing I noticed was the smell - there was a strong, plasticy odour in the air. Looking out of the apartment I was in, I could see multiple black plumes of smoke rising in the distance. I began seeing messages come through on my phone of cars and buses being set alight, and news of taxi drivers being shot in the street. A few of the attendees of the event I was at earlier in the week had their taxi driver shot while en-route to their next location - and lost their luggage in a subsequent burning of the taxi. Others had to evacuate their apartments when the shop units below them were set alight. Pretty much everywhere in Puerto Vallarta closed down.

I decided to do laundry.

My washing was done by hand - we didn’t have any washing machine in the apartment, and it’s not like I could go to a laundromat that day. I hung them in the courtyard out back to dry, the smell of burnings lingered and the sky began to cloud over with haze. Occasionally I’d stick my head out the front to see what was happening, conclude “not much” and then go back inside.

It was hard to maintain a sense of inner peace at first. Our apartment had become a sort-of control room for coordinating messages and support between us all. But we weren’t particularly at-risk, and I continued to do my laundry.

It took about two days for them to dry out, and they still weren’t quite ready before I moved to a hotel right by the airport in advance of my flight. I ended up laying the last few pieces out in the sun at the convention centre where we’d had the event, and proceeded to pack up and clear out all the things as usual. I flew out as planned from Puerto Vallarta the following Thursday. It ended up being more difficult to navigate the half-renovated Mexico City airport than it did Puerto Vallarta, but eventually I found my way through and left the country.

The term “kabuki theatre” comes from Japanese culture. It refers to a form of theatre involving extravagant outfits, exaggerated movements, and a series of moving setpieces and trapdoors, deliberately designed to be a visual spectacle. It has found a new lease of life in Western culture as a metaphor to describe when there is a deliberate performance or show for external audiences (such as the public) while something very different is going on behind-the-scenes (e.g. with politicians and hidden hand global actors).

woman in kimono standing on wooden bridge — Photo by Susann Schuster on Unsplash

I came to the conclusion that the “cartel violence”, the events in Iran, and many other things we are witnessing are not what they seem. Kabuki theatre, if you will. The media are deliberately used to rile up fear around uncertainty for something that has been meticulously planned.

When I was confident that what I was seeing was a deliberate psychological operation, I asked myself: what is the best way of responding to such displays? And the answer was simple. I did my laundry, as I would have done if nothing had happened that day. I am the one who gets to control how I respond. And through my actions, I get to create the environment around me and inspire others to stand in their sovereignty.

As W.E. Henley states in Invictus - a poem I spoke to in my Anarchapulco talk: