It's official. Kari Lake is declared the 'duly elected governor' … of Neverland

The failed Republican candidate for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, has spent a lot of time hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s personal Disneyland, and she seems to have fallen completely under the spell of the enraptured proselytes who populate the former president’s conspiracy driven Shangri-la.

Lake used to reside in the real world, the one where facts are facts and events that happen actually, you know, happen.

Now, however, I’m not sure in what imaginary realm Lake believes herself to dwell.

Narnia, maybe? Middle-earth? Oz? Wonderland?

As fantasies go, Kari Lake's is modest

Lake’s land of make believe is someplace where a losing political candidate can have the expedited appeal of her election lawsuit rejected by the Arizona Supreme Court, after having had no success in other courts, and after having lost the election, and still tell an interviewer that she – not the recently sworn-in Katie Hobbs – is the “duly-elected governor” or Arizona.

I can understand the appeal of living in a dreamworld, a fanciful fantasia of one’s own creation. Imagine if any one of us could snap our fingers and make our wildest dreams become reality.

In Lake’s dreams, she would have been Arizona’s governor.

What to watch:As Katie Hobbs becomes governor

As fantasies go, that strikes me as rather … modest.

After all, there are no rules in one’s personal cloud cuckoo land, none of the constrictions of reality. Anything you want to happen can happen. Anyone you wish to meet can be rejuvenated, even reborn.

Is Lake a true believer or playing a part?

For example, I could be the starting right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates while also playing guitar and performing with the newly reconstituted Crosby, Stills, Nash & Montini, only to take a break from the band’s tour to travel to Sweden, where the Nobel Prize in Literature is presented to me by the actress Isabella Rossellini and the poet Anne Sexton, each of whom I may or may not have been romantically linked.

Granted, my delusion, while glorious, draws no funding from gullibly duped political sycophants, as happens with Trump and with Lake. Those contributions and the people who offer them allow Trump and Lake to continue living their twisted dreams.

Alice woke up and left Wonderland. Dorothy returned home to Kansas from Oz. Not Kari. We cannot even be certain if Lake is simply an actress playing a part or if she genuinely believes her delusion.

However, those of us living in the real world know for certain there is only one place where Lake might hope to be a “duly elected governor”:

Neverland.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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