You have to love this crazy world, which, on particular days, seems to have been designed by Salvador Dali during a magic mushroom overdose. Just when you think things could not get more wacky, news arrives that 18 Republican legislators have written a letter nominating U.S. President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. I’m thinking of starting a GoFundMe so they can exfoliate the dark stains from their noses; feel free to chip in.
“Nobel! Nobel!” chanted the crowd at Mr. Trump’s rally in Michigan, where anti-irony drugs were apparently mixed in with the water supply. “That’s very nice, thank you,” said the American President in a once-yearly show of humility prescribed by his doctor (not the same Lebowski-eque doctor who admitted that Mr. Trump had dictated his own letter of supremely magnificent good health, nor the one who almost ran the Department of Veterans Affairs until allegations of misconduct came to light. Try to keep up.)
“President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula,” the Republicans’ letter says. “We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.”
In this land of magical thinking, the President is responsible for a peace accord that has not happened during a summit that has not yet taken place, involving weapons that have not been dismantled. As many wise international scholars have pointed out, we are at the beginning of a very thorny, complex process that has thwarted other administrations over the past couple of decades; never mind that the Trump administration could make the world a much less stable place if it acts on its threats to undermine the Iran nuclear agreement.
Still, imagine the consultations that would happen in Norway as the Peace Prize committee gathers to consider its nominees. In my mind, they are all stroking long white beards and adjusting their pince-nez. They don’t want to make the wrong choice; they certainly have in the past (You could easily argue that president Barack Obama, who failed in his early promises to work toward nuclear nonproliferation, was one such poor choice.)
I imagine the committee members sitting there, unwilling to be the first to speak, and one finally saying, “Well, he did take the difficult decision of firing Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice that time, thus preserving the delicate détente with Meat Loaf.” The others will nod, and they will contemplate in silence under the magnificent oil paintings and priceless clocks until one of them clears his throat and says what they’re all thinking: “We should probably just give it to Melania.”
ILLUSTRATION BY HANNA BARCZYK
Or, perhaps they will consult a special checklist, which is kept in an ancient safe and is only used as a resource in the case of particularly vexing peace-prize negotiations. I imagine it might look something like this:
Has the candidate ever led a multiyear conspiratorial crusade alleging that a former Nobel Peace Prize winner lied about his birthplace?
Has the candidate ever been involved with a university so fraudulent it was successfully sued by former students?
Has the candidate been accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women?
Has the candidate maintained the stamina necessary to make 3,001 false claims in 466 days, an average of more than 6 per day?
Has the candidate ever, however briefly, been engaged in the purveying of “The World’s Greatest Steaks?”
Has the candidate ever reimbursed his lawyer for paying hush money to a porn actress with whom the candidate did not, in any circumstances, conduct an adulterous affair, and during which (completely mythical) affair the porn star most definitely did not spank the candidate’s posterior with a magazine featuring his face on the cover? (Please use back of page if additional space is needed for comments.)
Has the candidate successfully frayed the democratic norms and institutions of the country whose leadership he won in the hugest election victory in all of human history (despite evidence of massive voter fraud engineered against him)?
At this point, I imagine the Nobel committee members taking off their pince-nez and rubbing their noble brows. What to do, in such a case? It’s clear that the President of the United States would be placated by receiving such an august award, and might even be persuaded away from smashing the world’s governing frameworks in one of his pre-nap tweetrums.
Perhaps the Nobel committee members could heed Stephen Colbert’s wise observation, delivered at the Emmy Awards, that if Mr. Trump had just been given an Emmy at some point, “I bet he would not have run for President.” Perhaps they can devise a new award, a shiny gold medal called King of Chaos and Lord of Misrule, except written in fancy Norwegian script so that the President never actually knows what it says.
There would be ample supporting evidence for such an award: The committee members could turn to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who recently said, “He is the most undemocratic president of the modern age, of people I have studied, that I’ve ever seen.”
Or they could consult Amy Siskind’s new book, The List, which provides a weekly tally of “the slow deconstruction of [American] democracy and our values,’’ as Ms. Siskind described the past year in an interview with NPR radio. Her book lays out all ways that norms have been eroded in the United States since Mr. Trump’s election, most with very little public attention. The 52nd week alone contains 121 such alarming changes, ranging from the weakening of the Endangered Species Act and rolling back emission controls on some trucks to paving the way for oil drilling in sensitive lands; from leaving giant holes in key appointments to the Departments of Education and State to federal troops abandoning disaster-blighted Puerto Rico even while much of the island was without power; and finally, of course, the mundane business of possible collusion with Russia.
This Herculean effort to tear down what more than two centuries of Americans have attempted to build does indeed deserve a prize, but it’s not the one for peace. Perhaps they can call it the Abnobel. As long as it’s big and gold, he’ll never notice.