SOFREP Sunday Cartoon: Living on Borrowed Time

Borrowed Time and Bad Habits

The scene looks like a cartel fever dream, all cash confetti and a grin wide enough to swallow half of Sinaloa. Yet above the celebration hangs a familiar shape from classical lore, suspended by threads that would make a cheap parade float blush. Our money-dancing cartel figure does not bother to look up because men who swim in money and menace rarely bother with things above their line of sight. They think the party lasts forever. That is why today’s Bob Lang original cartoon works. It hints at a reckoning without shouting about it. Like a man blissfully dancing through a minefield while telling himself the earth is soft.

The Subsidiary Nobody Asked For

That long blade is labeled with a name that lands like a brick tossed through a glass house. The moment Trump returned to the main political stage, talk of designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations resurfaced with the enthusiasm of a bar fight on half-price whiskey night. The cartoonist taps that mood. The sword becomes a corporate asset, a bit of dark humor about how American policy can feel like a boardroom decision carried out with cold steel instead of memos. The cartel figure keeps his arms open to the rain of cash. Wait…is that blood on his hands? Nice touch. 

He pretends not to notice that some business ventures end with quarterly reports and others end with judgment from above.

Living on Borrowed Time

The graphic tells a story without lecturing. The ground is littered with skulls because the cartel trade is not built on free markets but on human wreckage. The money piles high, yet time runs thin. That is the point. The character is alive inside a moment that cannot last. Think of it as a gambler on a winning streak who refuses to see the house shifting its weight behind him. The Spanish caption spells it out cleanly. “Living on Borrowed Time”, yes, indeed. 

But borrowed time always comes due, and sometimes it’s the reaper coming to collect.