Permanent Pause?

Trump’s latest utterance, the promise to “permanently pause” migration, is one of those phrases that tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual horsepower at work. A pause is temporary. Permanent is not. Weld them together and you do not get policy; you get a grammatical hostage note.

This is how strongman politics operates. Never offer clarity when you can serve word salad with a side of menace. Call something a pause so you can dodge the legal obligations that come with an actual ban. Call it permanent so your supporters can thump their chests about taking back control. It is the same trick Brexiteers pulled when they promised “frictionless borders” and “taking back control of our laws” while simultaneously insisting nothing would change at Dover. When opinion is given the same status as truth, nonsense flourishes.

The deeper problem is not the phrasing but the mindset it reveals. A President who cannot distinguish a pause from a ban is also one who cannot distinguish foreign policy from a bar-room rant. Two National Guards are shot, and instead of dealing with security failures or systemic issues, up pops a half baked decree aimed not at criminals but at entire nations labelled “third world”. It is collective punishment dressed up as common sense, and cheered on by people who think strong verbs are a substitute for coherent government.

What he is really saying is simple enough: he wants to close America’s doors to anyone who does not fit his preferred demographic. But like all populists, he lacks the courage to state it plainly. So we get this preposterous hybrid, a “permanent pause”, which reads like it was scribbled on the back of a napkin between golf holes.

If this is the intellectual standard of the modern right, no wonder Putin treats it as a playground. A polity that cannot even use the English language correctly should not be terribly surprised when its foreign policy ends up in the bin.