JD Vance’s decision, while in Germany, to meet the far-right AfD leader, Alice Weidel, yet decline a meeting with the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would have caused more alarm, I feel, if it hadn’t come accompanied by so much other signalling. The vice-president of a nation engaged in tearing down its own institutions lectured the whole of Europe on its project to “destroy democracy”, which is absolutely textbook: he’s describing black as white, openly turning observable reality on its head. It’s unsettling, for sure, but that’s because it’s audacious, not because it’s complicated. It’s the simplest move of statecraft ever –...