Since the earliest humans gathered around the fire at night, fearing the famished saber-toothed tiger or the just clumsy mastodon, stories were told to distract from the darkness and things that were going bump in the night. Those stores have evolved into fables, fairy tales, legends and fantasy. And even in this age we find ourselves occasionally enthralled by stories, which may explain the fantasies that are woven into the daily news reports. Consider just a few:

The Wolf Who Cried Boy

There are times when the puerile nature of Donald Trump appears in its absolute self. Trump is like the mischievous little boy who discovers that if he blows his toy trumpet in a stable full of horses, the horses lose their equine minds and the horse trainers and stable hands have their hands full making sure that these very valuable animals don’t injure themselves while trying to stomp that stable to splinters.

Like that mischievous little boy, Trump discovered that if he used words like “Take Your Country Back” or “You’re Not Going to Have a Country” over and over to his adoring MAGA minions, said minions would actually try to take back the country (that has been nefariously taken from them) by storming the Capitol as the Electoral College votes was about to begin and doing a pretty good imitation of an angry lynch mob intent on killing the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Fast forward two years later and Trump has now discovered that in all of his years of ducking and dodging and bobbing and weaving (with a spin move or two from time to time) with the American legal system, he is learning that Truth or Consequences is a real thing.

And for the first time in his chicanery-spattered life Trump is very close to having to address the consequences of some his many misdeeds that can result in public shaming, very real financial pain and even the possibility (however remote) of his wearing an orange jumpsuit (courtesy of the federal government, or the State of New York or the State of Georgia) to kind of match his signature orange hued hair.

And it appears that he is going back to his 1.6.21. play book and put out the siren call to his still adoring MAGA minions. He seems to believe by chanting the magic words “Take Your Country Back” and/or “You’re Not Going to Have a Country” his minions will once again charge the capitals of the Deep State and rescue him from the clutches of the unclean and unjust.

Except that this time the MAGA response seems to be lukewarm at best. There have been some well-armed demonstration ballets in front to government buildings but the heat of the rhetoric would live a Trump Burger medium rare on his rhetorical grill.

And it may be that Trump is turning into the Wolf Who Cried – and only a Boy answered.

DeSantis in MAGA Land

In tip toeing around the presidential race starting line, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seems to have fallen down the MAGA rabbit hole and found himself in a world that is absolutely illogical and beyond any hope of comprehension. And as reprehensible a character as DeSantis is, it is hard to watch him negotiate the in MAGA Land no sense makes sense, and if he wants to become the Republican nominee for president, then he will have to learn to walk the walk in MAGA Land.

So, he tries to go for the Trump Deflect Move by criticizing New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg for not going after “rising crime” in New York (it is not) instead of persecuting St. Donald of Trump for minor “personal mistakes”.

Deciding to dance on the ice floes like Liza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, DeSantis claims that the war between Ukraine and Russia is a “territorial dispute”, presumably just like the “territorial disputes” between Germany and Poland in 1939 and the “territorial dispute” between Germany and France in 1940 or the “territorial disputes” between the United States and the indigenous peoples of North America all through the 19^th century.

Clearly DeSantis has some work to do before he can be an adept in MAGA Land.