esquire.com – See, Hamlet wouldn’t have made much of a play if, after his long, dark night of the soul, Hamlet told his father’s ghost to screw and took a job with Uncle Claudius.

Moody and morose, Paul Ryan has stalked the parapets of his own ego ever since it became clear that He, Trump would be the nominee of the Republican party for president of the United States. (It’s helpful to write it out that way a couple of times a day just to make sure you haven’t subconsciously blotted the reality out of your memory.) He invited several of his more prominent acolytes in the elite political press to join him in his lengthy walks along the fogbound ramparts of his carefully cultivated public persona. What is a policy wonk, public intellectual, numbers guru, sympathetic friend of the working poor to do?