The AfD leads a German poll for the first time. It won’t be the last.

Germany has an undeserved reputation for dour rationality and lacking an appreciation of the absurd. In reality, however, Germany is a – for want of nicer terms – very counterintuitive country.

If you are running a regime in Kiev (at least according to the official story) and blow up Germany’s vital energy infrastructure, Germans will say thank you and throw money and arms at you, while also helping you blame someone else (the Russians, of course: Germany has never been an imaginative country).

If you are in Washington and certainly had a hand in blowing up that infrastructure, and then go on to fleece the Germans by selling LNG at a high cost and promoting their deindustrialization by filching their companies, good Germans get very, very angry – at China.

If you happen to be the single most popular and perfectly legal political party in Germany, get ready to never be allowed to actually participate in governing. Because Germany is also a country in which that single most popular party – the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, commonly known simply as AfD) – is locked out of building governing coalitions. By definition.