I believe that most students, when first reading Hamlet, are inclined to regard Polonius as a sententious fool, present mostly for comic relief.
Sententious he may be. But it strikes me that most of his advice is wise and to the point.
Consider, to take one example, his famous speech to his son Laertes as the young man prepares to sail for France.
Is there a single item among Polonius’s “few precepts” that rings false?
I think that the speech, though pitched a bit high rhetorically, is full of good advice, from the bits at the beginning about holding one’s tongue to the concluding “to thine own self be true” admonition at the end.
Thinking about Volodymyr Zelensky’s performance in the Oval Office on Friday, it occurred to me that the Ukrainian president might profit by emulating certain of Polonius’s strictures. I am not thinking of Dane’s advice that one should “Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act.” Nor am I thinking of Polonius’s sage advice, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Both, to be sure, are sound prescriptions that the President of Ukraine might practice to his advantage.
But no: what impressed me as I digested the theater of the Zelensky Oval Office outing was something apparently more trivial. It revolved around what Polonius said about clothes, especially his observation that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” Before the fireworks really started, at about minute 40 of the 50-minute Oval Office press conference when Zelensky and J.D. Vance got into it, someone asked why the President of Ukraine was not wearing a suit.
I thought that was a good question. President Trump, when he greeted Zelensky at the White House that morning, joked that he was “all dressed up today.” In fact, Zelensky was wearing some variation on his signature black bohemian fatigues.
Gents, if you were to go to the White House to meet with the President on a matter of supreme urgency, would you show up accoutered as did Volodymyr Zelensky? Or would you wear a suit?
In answer to a question posed in the Oval Office, we know that Zelensky does own a suit. He wore one not so long ago when he met with Klaus Schwab.
Why, then, would he choose to forgo that elementary sartorial mark of respect when going to meet with the President of the United States? Was it a calculated act of disrespect or contempt?
Maybe in part. But I think it had a positive goal. In brief, I think that it was calculated to appeal to the nascent Jane Fonda that dwells in the breast of every would-be liberal supporter of the putatively downtrodden. Zelensky, I suspect, dresses the way he does for the same reason that Fidel Castro always dressed in olive green military fatigues. He thought it burnished his reputation as an OK revolutionary™, and it did.
Zelensky, who began his career as a sort of performance artist, is clearly very conscious of the theatrical dimension of politics. It’s not so much that he has dressed for success as that he dresses to make an impression. Which makes his behavior in the Oval Office all the more curious. The meeting had barely concluded before the Babylon Bee posted a story quipping that Zelensky “tries bold new strategy of insulting people he is begging money from.”
Satire? Or the simple truth?
A couple of points. One, I suspect that Zelensky was improperly briefed. There have been many reports that he had been advised to be tough in his meeting with Trump. If so, he was being given bad advice. The journalist Scott Jennings cut to the chase when he observed that Zelensky’s task in that meeting was actually quite simple. “All he had to do,” Jennings said, “was walk in and say, thank you. I’m really grateful to be here. We want to be partners with the United States. We’re grateful for your leadership. Where are the papers and what are we having for lunch? That’s all he had to do.”
But behind the exigencies that bore upon this one episode is the complex history of Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the equally complex history of the character of Volodymyr Zelensky.
We are encouraged by many people to see the former as a simple morality play in which Russia, or at least Vladimir Putin, is the irredeemable bad guy while Ukraine is the noble victim.
I won’t open that fraught story except to say, even if Putin’s behavior will not bear scrutiny, what has been happening in Ukraine these past few years is not exactly edifying, as anyone who asks about elections, freedom of the press, censorship, and anti-Semitism will know.
About Zelensky himself, The Spectator recently published an eye-opening reflection by a former senior aide to Zelensky. Entitled “Only Trump—not Zelensky—can save Ukraine,” the column, published under a pseudonym, is a chronicle of disillusionment. “I cannot,” the unnamed author writes, “remain silent about how Zelensky is weakening Ukraine under the guise of war. As a result of this new climate of fear, I must write these words under the veil of anonymity—a necessary precaution against retaliation from the very regime I once served.”
Ukraine has become a paradox: a nation fighting for its sovereignty while dismantling its own democratic foundations. For years, the West has indulged in the illusion of Zelensky as the “face of democracy.” In reality, he has undermined our democracy, institutions, and economy, making Ukraine much weaker in the face of an existential threat—and in the process, destroying our nation’s motivation to fight the Russian aggressor. . . . Today, Zelensky and his circle have consolidated nearly total control over the state. They can manipulate elections, suppress dissent, and imprison whomever they choose. Independent media are officially banned from television and radio airwaves, while opposition and anti-corruption activists active online have been threatened with arrest.
This runs deeply counter to the approved narrative. Vladimir Putin has been pre-selected for the role of villain. Introducing another without ceremony only confuses people.
Many hundreds of thousands of people have died in the Ukraine war. Donald Trump wants to end the slaughter by bringing Russia and Ukraine to the bargaining table. Zelensky says that without “security guarantees” from the United States, any deal is hollow. I thought Trump himself countered that argument effectively in his exchanges with Zelensky in the Oval Office. And Marco Rubio, speaking with Caitlin Collins later that day, patiently laid out the president’s strategy.
It is an open question, I think, whether Zelensky is primarily after peace or a continued place holding the reins of power under the gratifying klieg lights of media celebrity. His cavalier neglect of Polonius’s sound advice about haberdashery is not encouraging.
Actually, Zelensky is perfect; in the sense that he is a perfect personification of the type of “leader” who helps the enemies of America to weaken America as is their gleeful, vicious and LEFTIST desire.
He’s utterly unqualified - a joke of a man - who anyone who is a real leader and man worthy of respect considers a laughingstock. He is a puppet bereft of respect for the rights of anyone whose thoughts and deeds conflict with his wanton, avaricious claims to unearned power.
In other words a cluster - f…k deliberately chosen and designed to drain the life out of - as well as treasure - of anyone stupid enough to deal with him as if he were legitimate.
Fortunately, unlike our former brain-dead, mentally incontinent and incompetent President Biden?
President Trump sees him for exactly what he is - a posturing, pandering fool and will deal with him appropriately.
His incompetence is as clear to anyone who has eyes to see as clear as was Biden’s mental incompetence from Day 1 of his playing his four-year-long role of being our first Sock-puppet President.
Whether one brings up Zelenskyy’s infamous phone call with Biden in June 2022, or focus on his imbroglio with Trump, or all of his public complaints throughout this conflict that the Western Powers were not giving him enough money and weapons to fight Putin, Zelenskyy has been consistent in his criticisms and accusations. It’s the old, “thanks for what you’ve done, but what have you done for me lately” argument played over and over.
President Trump correctly observed to Zelenskyy that he had no cards to play. The battle lines at the edges of the Donbass and Donetsk regions have been in a stalemate for months now. And exciting as they are to some, Ukraine’s drone attacks on petroleum refineries have failed to significantly reduce Russian oil production or refining.
Russia still has a large pool of military aged men to throw into the maw, while Ukraine’s pool has shrunk to the point it is no longer confined to military age men, but to anyone considered “able bodied” by the regime. Many of the young men that could have fought fled Ukraine early in the war and no patriotic appeals have brought them back.
I’ve often wondered if Zelenskyy sees himself as Ukraine’s Winston Churchill? Does he stand before the mirror and practice his, “We shall meet them on the beaches” speech? Does he use a tailor to get his military chic just so? Does he have a Che’ poster in his bedroom? All of this is pure speculation on my part, but to me, everything seems scripted with him. It is true that some men rise to the times, but I cannot get the image of him playing the piano with his dong for comedy out of my mind.
Who is the real Zelenskyy? Many people forget that among other national politicians who squirrelled away huge sums of money to avoid taxes and public notice revealed in the Panama Papers, Zelenskyy was one of the rascals identified. And I also cannot forget two very direct instances where Ukraine was caught selling arms on the Black Market. Nor can I forget he fired two of his ministers for taking too much graft. I never realized graft had an acceptable limit.
Am I being too hard on Zelenskyy? And am I letting my low opinion of him affect my feelings on Ukraine’s plight? Maybe. But I’ve also filled pages on Ukraine’s long history of graft and corruption to be fooled by the media’s attempts to turn a charlatan into a hero. I also refuse to accept the media’s framing of this being a case of a noble David fighting against an evil Goliath. Ukraine’s skirts are just as dirty as those of Russia.
In the end, the final outcome of this war could have been predicted in February of 2022 as easily as in February of 2025. No amount of lawyers, guns and money can change it. All that can change is the number of casualties on both sides which would be an ever increasing number. And to what point?
To all of those waving the bloody shirt—Stop It! You do Ukraine (and Russia) no favors.
When you have essentially become a client state of another, it generally pays to act as if you realize that fact; apparently, Zelenskyy didn’t get the memo.
And while I have a great deal of sympathy for what the Ukrainian people are going through, I also believe their leadership has been poking the Bear for some time. Putin, by no means a good guy, finally reacted to the provocation and to US fecklessness & took steps.
For all the pearl-clutchers out there, I would suggest they do a little research on the Minisk treaty, or the history of the area which Putin currently occupies-- the areas that is mostly Russian speaking & have repeatedly expressed a desire to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine-- or the promises given to Russia that NATO member states would not be created along its borders. I would also suggest that they ponder our intel community’s deliberately destabilizing activities in the Ukraine, the fact that at least a percentage of the weapons they have received from us are turning up on the black market and Zelenskyy’s ruthless suppression and pillaging of the traditional churches in support of a recently created state sponsored one.There are no white hats here.
And watching Zelenskyy’s antics on Friday is a master class in how to bite the hand that feeds you & piss off its owner, particularly since the mineral agreement had supposedly been worked out quietly beforehand-- all Z had to do was show up, sign the deal & say ‘thank you’. I don’t know where this guy got the idea that trying to use the press to pressure Trump into doing anything was a good strategy but it absolutely proves that he cannot read a room.
I hope, for the sake of his people, that he rethinks his actions. He can’t hide behind Europe’s skirts-- they have their own existential threats to deal with and don’t have the armament to support the Ukraine war effort-- and no one else cares to be drawn into the debacle. It was a foregone conclusion that this was not a war that Ukraine could win; the only question left is how much they are going to lose when it ends
Mollie Hemingway asserts in a post on X that Zelensky was coached on how to deal with President Trump and Vice-President Vance. If this is true, then we have solid proof of what some have believed about the Ukrainian leader: that he’s uncomfortably close to being a fool and also more of a leftist than anyone suspected, given where the advice he used came from. Once again, if Hemingway’s post is accurate, those who provided it, namely Susan Rice, Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Alexander Vindman, willfully, and probably with malicious intent, interfered in an operation of US foreign policy, which is a serious violation. Five years ago, Democrats accused President Trump of having “solicited foreign interference to boost his re-election chances, undermined national security[,] and ordered an “unprecedented” campaign to obstruct Congress,” and that was only over a phone call about Hunter. This interference is much more serious, legally and morally, given that lives are at stake. Pam Bondi and the FBI might want to look into this matter.
As CNN’s Scott Jennings correctly pointed out, Zelensky had one job–an easy one–to do, but botched it spectacularly. All Zelensky had to do was show up dressed appropriately, thank the president and the US for their support, exclaim a desire to be partners with the US (mineral rights deal), sign the mineral rights agreement, and then ask what was on the menu for lunch. That 's it. Easy peezy.
But nooo…
Little Z-man had to show up dressed in his cosplay tactical outfit, and then act out his slav-ingrate, double-cross 'tude in front of God, Trump and TV cameras. Frankly, I don’t think this display of ingratitude and defiance can be assuaged or atoned for. I don’t think Zelensky has either the character or intelligence for it.
Perhaps its time for regime change in Ukraine.