The Nobel Peace Prize for 2020 has just been announced, one month ahead of schedule. The prize committee abruptly terminated its annual deliberations at 7:30pm, Oslo time, on Tuesday evening, September 15, immediately following the conclusion of the Middle East peace agreements signed at the White House moments earlier.
As with the science and economics Nobel Prizes of recent decades, the Peace Prize this year is being split three ways. One-third of the prize will be awarded for the Serbia-Kosovo Agreement, and one-third for each of the Israel-UAE and Israel-Bahrain “Abraham Accords.” The three winners will share the prize equally.
In an all-time first, beating out Marie Curie’s two-award, 109-year-standing world record, this year’s winners are, respectively, Donald J Trump, Donald J Trump and Donald J Trump, in that order. In another first, Trump will be the prize’s first recipient to be awarded for three winning accomplishments that all occurred in the same month, and within a month of receiving the prize itself.
Albert Einstein’s great-grandson explained, “My great-grandfather’s achievements in 1905 defined Annus Mirabilis, with three seminal papers that changed physics forever; I suppose this September is now Mr Trump’s Mensis Mirabilis. It is an interesting play on words that the Latin word for ‘month’ is mensis, the inflected form of mensa, a hidden meaning perhaps preserved for this special occasion and as an honorific appropriate to the accomplishment.
“I am pleased to see that, unlike my great-grandfather, Mr Trump will not be made to wait 17 years for his recognition, nor will he endure having merely one of his significant contributions rewarded. It is particularly fitting that Mr Trump’s unprecedented achievement fulfills the spirit of the League of Nations, coincidentally, or perhaps by spooky action, in the same year as that institution’s 100th anniversary, and in a way that no international institution, including the League, ever has quite attained.
“This month’s peace miracles call one to consider Mr Trump’s philosophy of rejecting experts, careerist diplomats and international institutions and going it alone, recalling that my great-grandfather did his greatest work outside the ivory tower, at his remote desk at the patent office and in the privacy of his modest rowboat.
“As my great-grandfather liked to say, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ Thank you, Mr President, for embodying the lesson of my great-grandfather’s adage and doing so in the service of world peace, my great-grandfather’s greatest passion amongst all.”
In yet another first, former US president Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is being recalled for non-performance on the prize committee’s bold 2009 advance. The idea for the recall was proposed by Barack Obama himself, when requested by the new leadership of the Democratic Party to re-register as a Republican for advocating meritocracy with excessive stridency, though Obama’s change of party was over Joe the Plumber’s objections.
In a conclusive rebuff to Joe the Plumber, and to ensure he was not without a political home, the former president proposed to return his Nobel Prize medal as the ultimate proof of his fealty to the meritocratic American ideal, securing his new party membership.
Apparently, the ghost of John Lewis had followed Obama home after the former president’s eulogy at Lewis’ funeral, haunting him for weeks and prompting Obama’s unprecedented action. In nightly somnolent appearances, Lewis’ apparition admonished the former president to “judge each person by his actions, and neither by his words, nor by the color of his hair.”
On signing his new voter card, Obama proclaimed to the reporters gathered, “to each according to his contribution.” Asked to comment on his and Michelle’s recently signed exclusive podcast deal with Spotify, estimated by some sources at up to US$100 million, Obama told the crowd, “We earned that.”
The former president’s adolescent-period mentor, former Communist Party member and poet Frank Marshall Davis, explained, “He mixes up his Marxist aphorisms from all the coke I gave him during my close mentorship of him in Honolulu, though I tried my very best to rather thoroughly, well, inculcate him using every classical Socratic technique employed by the master himself, as per my autobiographically described practices. I suppose, for my benefit, the aphorisms are not all he forgot.”
In other news, former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has relocated to the home of his daughter’s in-laws, who live in Iran, where he was granted honorary citizenship due to failing health.
The in-laws’ residence is in Tehran, adjacent to the home of his son-in-law’s best friend’s father, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, providing Kerry with the opportunity to enjoy talking shop with his former JCPOA interlocutor.
Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, a business partner of Hunter Biden, and the eponymous ketchup fortune heir-apparent, has moved the Biden-Heinz consulting firm to the Iranian capital so he can care for his aging stepfather. The consultancy, through a portfolio control-holding, has expertise in the sale of American technology for enabling nuclear-missile-capable submarines to remain quieter and to avoid detection and thereby more safely approach closer to shore.
Hunter Biden welcomed the addition of a branch office to his practice and plans to be a regular visitor. Said Hunter, “China’s implementation of our group’s technology is nearing completion, so this is a logical time for us to expand our market and it perfectly matches the objectives of our group’s largest shareholder, China, with their own recent $400 billion investment commitment to Iran.
“With an economy only 1/50th of America’s GDP, Iran nevertheless boasts 34 submarines, just over half as many as the US Navy, and is the third-largest submarine force in the world after Russia, so it was our logical next market.”
Hunter’s father, Democratic presidential candidate and also the former US vice-president, Joe Biden, repeating his own paternal advice once given to Hunter in Beijing, commented yet again to Hunter, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Since the first hints of peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates one month ago, the former secretary of state has been seeking medical attention for a condition described as a discombobulating combination of TDS, also known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and TCD, the latter known as Trump Cognitive Dissonance. The only known cure for TCD is reading Trump’s book The Art of the Deal. Kerry, thus far, has refused treatment and his condition is rapidly deteriorating.
The Who, an English rock band, will be giving a special performance at the Nobel ceremony next month, singing their classic “Pinball Wizard.” Obama, fortuitously, had plans to be in Oslo, connected to the return of his recalled medal.
The former president had gained acclaim as the first presidential crooner, stunning audiences with memorable and seemingly impromptu renditions of “Amazing Grace,” “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Let’s Stay Together.” He will accompany the band at the ceremony, singing the line “I just handed my pinball crown to him.”
Referring to the three Trump peace accords, a reporter asked the former president, “How do you think he does it?”
Obama answered, “I don’t know.”
Mike Phillips copyright ©2020