Picture this: you’re doom-scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, and a woman appears on your screen, sitting on a couch next to her husband, smiling sweetly at the camera. She says, “I just asked him what he thinks of my pregnant body.” Then the video cuts to her husband, who lets out a long, dramatic “Ewwww”—half retch, half shout, the kind of sound that makes you cringe and laugh at the same time. It’s funny, but also a little confusing. Then you realize what’s happening. That “pregnant body” question wasn’t the real question at all. She probably asked him something completely…

There is a photograph from Montoire that every student of modern politics should look at slowly. Henri Philippe Pétain, the man once celebrated as the hero of Verdun, shakes hands with Adolf Hitler within months of signing an armistice that placed more than half of France under Nazi control. The two men do not look like two giants of history meeting as equals; they look, as in fact they were, like a victor and a man choosing to surrender. The image stays with us because it is not only a historical document. It is also a model of something that…