The Nobody No Peace Prize
Donald Trump, if were more sure of his professed convictions, would be proud and happy to be passed over by conspiracy of dumb Swedes that passed him by for the Noble Peace Prize, which they gave to the opposition leader in Venezuela, who so far has made little dent in the corrupt tyranny that is destroying her county. The winner, Maria Machado, has the last word on the the affair. Expressing her gratitude for the prize, she declared in a post on X: 'I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!'
This is a committee that awarded Al Gore, for lying about environmental issues he has never studied and does not understand, and to Barack Obama, who had in eight months of office done nothing but did go on to make war in North Africa, and a host of loud-mouthed political nonentities who prate of peace and human rights but do absolutely nothing. Even the American President who helped to negotiate peace in the Russo-Japanese War, Teddy Roosevelt, is well known for his aphorism, "What this country needs is a good war," and did everything to drag the US into the immoral Spanish-American War, which he insisted on spreading to the Philippines where hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in the American campaign to spread democracy.
The only thing good I have to say about Jean-Paul Sartre is that he had the courage to reject this badge of dishonor, despite the money it would have brought him. He said quite correctly that a writer should not become an institution. And this was in the 1960s, when writers of the quality of St-Jean Perse and George Seferis were winners. In later decades, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been routinely awarded to Third World writers no one has read and whose original texts the committee members cannot read. In the same way, The Nobel Peace Prize is just the Affirmative Action boondoggle on the international scale. I have never understood why anyone cared about any award given in the name of the creator of dynamite by a group of smug Swedish nobodies.
Selection of those awarded the Nobel Peace Prize are made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose five members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. The members are said to reflect the relative strengths of the political-parties in the Storting. Alfred Nobel was, however, Swedish.
Sorry for the mistake. I can never quite remember which subset of decayed Scandinavians gives which prize. I sometimes think that after a thousand years of the emigration of energetic Scandinavians—Vikings, Normans, and the settlers of the American frontier, all that’s left in the homeland are effete goose-steppers like the Myrdals, Dag Hammerskold, Jon Elster and creeps of that ilk. Kidding aside, some of my best friends have been Scandinavian Americans
Puh-Tay-Toe, Puh-Taw-Toe. I assume that the Sven & Ole jokes apply either way. Not to mention Ted Baxter’s punchline about the Scandinavian fisherman’s wife: “Not tonight, dear. I’ve got a haddock.”
Ken, Buddaydo
I suspect half or more of the reason Donald Trump wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize was because he knew it would create yet another wave of anguish and angst in the unhinged progressives of the world, and he appears to receive a great part of his power from liberal tears. That, at least, is a somewhat more noble motive than actually thinking the prize means anything.