Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, and the even more lofty Nobel Peace Prize, are the most prestigious and coveted awards that recognize the endeavors or accomplishments (outside of science) benefiting mankind by a person or a group of people.
As I despair about what is happening, both to our country and the world, where authoritarianism is taking or has taken hold, I wish one or both of these awards could be awarded to the people who are trying to fight it.
It may not be a universal aspect of human nature, but most people crave or at least appreciate recognition for efforts they’ve expended to achieve, or are trying to achieve. People like Trump lust after it. Most others, from Time’s award to the Nobels, to winners of Oscars, Emmys, or Pullitzers, at least get a rush when they win one.
My nomination for the Time/Nobel can be divided into categories, though this really isn’t necessary. It includes everyone who participated in a demonstration against an authoritarian leader, everyone who shared by talking or writing about what was happening, and in a different way, everyone who risked or gave their lives fighting it in Ukraine.
I wish one or both of these awards could be given now. I have no doubt that millions of us are despairing. We need a boost.
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Two things struck me watching the news last night. One was a video of the Trump Cabinet meeting a few days where Steve Witkoff, United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, pitched Trump as the “single finest candidate” ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump and everyone in the room wants us to belieive he deserves the honor awarded to people who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
One might wonder what Nobel would have thought about the army Turmp has been building under the guise of fighting crime and illegal immigration. He also might wonder about Trump trying to run roughshod over the fraternity between free nations by cozying up to authoritarian counties.
Witkoff made his Nobel Peace Prize statement with a straight face. There was no hint of irony. Nobody in the room showed any indication of cracking a smile, let alone falling on the floor beset with a sudden attack of the giggles.
I wonder how a Cabinet room full of people not beholden to Trump who also were sane would have reacted to the Nobel Peace Prize shite. Probably like shown below:
If you think Epstein and Ukraine are the stories Trump, if he’s got a semblance of sensibility, ought to be fitfully fretting about in the wee hours of the morning it has to be what he’s going to do with RFK Jr. How can he, the man who’s never wrong and has never admitted he was wrong admit he was wrong about Kennedy? All I can come up with is something to do with Trump claming that nobody told him how bad having brain worms were.
I added these illustrations:
These are merely two examples of how Trump has surrounded himself with toadies.
If only these were real amphibians. At least most toads play an important beneficial role in the ecosystem (read article). They are more like the exception, cane toads which have toxic skins and a voracious appetites. They are now considered a pest and an invasive species in many of its introduced regions. You can chose your synonym for these human toadies (click below to enlarge):
Here’s the question I pose to you:
Shit or shite, we say it the the first way and the Brits say it the second. Either way you say it, in reality what we see before us on a daily basis is an exaggerated version of the only dirty joke my father ever told me.
He told it as if it really happened to him when he was in the Army. He set it up by explaining how the mess hall cook was not someone to trifle with because, as a master sergeant, he could order troops to do the most boring repetitious KP like peeling potatoes for weeks at a time.
I knew about KP because I’d read Beetle Bailey comics.
Cookie (Cornelius) Jowls, was known for his questionable cooking and his lack of sanitary food preparation measures. He expected his soldiers to show that they thought his cooking was always fantastic and for them to praise every meal effusively.
In my father’s story one day the mess sergeant became suspicious that his soldiers were faking their compliments so he baked cakes, and instead of his usual chocolate icing from a can, he got his icing from another can, also known as the latrine.
When desert came, the soldiers could immediately smell what was what, but they knew they had to eat the cake. Each and every one of them did their best not to throw up and managed to swallow a few forkfuls. Then the only brave soldier in the group summoned the courage to exclaim “master sergeant, this cake tastes like shit!”
It was like everyone in the mess hall held their breath for what seemed like an eternity, but it was only seconds before this brave soul succumbed and said…
