Can’t help but admire Zelensky’s bravery and defiance here in the face of almost certain death. Fate is funny, putting a guy who starred in a comedy series about a teacher who semi-accidentally got elected president of Ukraine as the actual real life president who now is tasked with steeling his country for a long and grueling fight – a fight with which brings the strong possibility he personally will not live to see the end of it. He’s not King Leonidas or Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle, men who were bred and groomed to lead. He’s a regular dude with above average intelligence and speaking skills who could make people laugh. A few slightly different decisions in life and Zelensky could be the wacky Russian immigrant neighbor on some NBC half-hour sitcom. There’d be an article on the bottom of TMZ’s front page saying how worried Yury from The Kevin Hart Show was about his family back home in Ukraine while he’s safe in Los Angeles with his wife Kristina Rivera, who plays the quirky evidence lab tech expert on CSI: St Louis.

Yet Zelensky’s in Kyiv, maintaining this redoubtable dignity in a world full of cowards and weasels and tyrants. Meanwhile Putin has to sleep with one eye open if he even sleeps at all. Boris Johnson whimpers like a baby pleading forgiveness for throwing parties while Brits were locked down. Trump facing a moment in 2020 where COVID-19 beckoned him to lead and he failed by any and every measure imaginable. Netanyahu starting a fucking war in a desperate last ditch bid to remain in power. Mohammed bin Salman’s goons butchering a dude who wrote some mean things about him. The list goes on and on. History doesn’t bring these tests to every leader and fewer pass them when they do come. It’s not all the time when you can say with 100% sincerity and without it being just political campaign media shop bullshit that one is an “inspiration” to his people.

Volodymyr Zelensky is an inspiration. May his name long outlive him, whatever happens.