Nobody Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

[MineralMan]

It is not a contest. Potential recipients are not questioned by the committee. Many people can nominate someone for the award, but that does not make any of the nominees a contestant. There is no contest.

Rather, the Nobel Committee considers the actions and work of people around the world. What has a person done to promote peace and diplomacy? How has the person overcome challenges to help pacify a dangerous situation? Has a person demonstrated a true desire for world peace? Is a person someone who has dedicated his or her life to promote a peaceful world?

Questions like that. The committee doesn't communicate with a potential awardee. Instead it looks at the accomplishments of those under consideration. Then, it makes its choice. Then, that choice is made public and the recipient is notified.

Donald J. Trump, I'm certain, was never really considered for the 2025 Peace Prize. Nominated, but not considered by the committee. Indeed, his accomplishments are more against peace than for it. He is totally unqualified for such an award.

He did not lose the Nobel Peace Prize. Nobody loses it. He was not awarded that prize. It's that simple.

[MineralMan]

1. From Wikipedia: Four US Presidents Have Received the Nobel Peace Prize

None of those four was Donald J. Trump

Barack Obama was the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, after Theodore Roosevelt (1906) and Woodrow Wilson (1919)—both of whom received the award during their terms—and Jimmy Carter (2002), who received the award 21 years after leaving office.

[ananda]

23. Jimmy Carter has been the best recipient of my lifetime...

maybe ever.

He was always the perfect embodiment of peace ahd humanity

He had that energy.

[MineralMan]

24. Agreed!

[Blues Heron]

2. He wanted it, he coveted it, and he was denied it. Then he lost it. Ketchup cleanup time!

[Gore1FL]

3. Mr. Webster disagrees with your definition of "win."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/win

win
1 of 2
verb
ˈwin
won ˈwən ; winning
Synonyms of win
transitive verb

1
a
: to get possession of by effort or fortune
b
: to obtain by work : earn
striving to win a living from the sterile soil
2
a
: to gain in or as if in battle or contest
won the championship
b
: to be the victor in
won the war
3
a
: to make friendly or favorable to oneself or to one's cause —often used with over
won him over with persuasive arguments
b
: to induce to accept oneself in marriage
was unable to win the woman he loved
4
a
: to obtain (something, such as ore, coal, or clay) by mining
b
: to prepare (a vein or bed) for regular mining
c
: to recover (metal) from ore
5
: to reach by expenditure of effort
intransitive verb

1
: to gain the victory in a contest : succeed
2
: to succeed in arriving at a place or a state
winless
ˈwin-ləs
adjective
winnable
ˈwi-nə-bəl
adjective
win

2 of 2
noun
: victory
especially : first place at the finish (as of a horse race)

[Gimpyknee]

11. I think you missed MineralMan's point.

Similarly, nobody “win’s” the Medal of Honor.

[Torchlight]

12. Nope

[Gore1FL]

14. If the word was used in the context of a Medal of Honor, it would be accepted and understood for what is

There is a time and place to worry about semantics. I submit his "point" doesn't change the actual conversation.

[QueerDuck]

4. I remember when the Academy Awards changed the wording to "... and the Oscar goes to..."

and dropped the phrase "... and the winner is..."

[Ocelot II]

5. Quite true. It's awarded, not won. It's not a competition, though doubtless Trump sees it that way.

For him, everything is a zero-sum game. There were obviously a fair number of people and organizations who were worthy of the award (Trump not being among them), and the final decision can't have been an easy one. But I'd bet kroner to Krugerrands that Trump was eliminated early in the discussion. The criteria for being a nominator is pretty loose; they include just about any government official or legislator. That means that any half-baked GOP Congresscritter could have and probably did nominate Trump (Luna, R-FL; Carter; R-GA, Issa; R-CA; and Tenney, R-NY, that we know of so far), and let him know about it, in a painfully transparent attempt to curry favor. In further acts of international political theater Netanyahu nominated him, as did Milei of Argentina and government leaders of Pakistan and Cambodia.

Nominees who did not receive the award but who actually care about world peace would likely congratulate the recipient as someone after their own spirit, because they respect what the award represents and weren't lobbying for the award for their own ego gratification. Trump will just sulk and find someone to blame because he thinks he's entitled to it but somebody else "won" it.

[Goonch]

6. ;-{)

[Shellback Squid]

7. he lost

and he knows this

[GopherGal]

8. And he lost to (gasp) a WOMAN!

A Spanish-speaking woman at that!

Probably Ketchup-mageddon in the Oval today. (Or maybe the residence...)

[Bluetus]

15. The best part is that he will LOSE 3 more times

if he lives that long.

I'd love to see the award given to Trump after he is dead, with a statement from Nobel that Trump's death is the best opportunity for peace the world has seen for a while.

[niyad]

22. Apart from the sheer waste of the award in that case. apparently there is a rule

against awarding it posthumously.

[Bluetus]

34. That's a pity. I wonder if the Nobel people would make one exception

Maybe state that the award would name Trump as soon as he is dead.

But seriously, they are doing the right thing, by looking for people who are truly worthy, with politics not entering into the decision.

The big question now is whether Trump will keep bitching about this, about how he has ended more wars than anybody knows about, and he is the greatest peace-maker ever to walk this Earth. Or will Trump move on to something else?

And regarding the Nobel decision, I think Alfred Nobel would be very pleased that his legacy is to recognize, and bring a spotlight to, people like María Corina Machado for "promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy." It is not necessary for Nobel to point out that Trump's legacy is exactly the opposite. That point makes itself.

[Dave Id]

9. Nobody wins a Nobel Peace Prize

...and what frustrates Dirty Donald, he can't buy one either.

[Gaugamela]

10. Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize because Obama got one. It's part of Trump's sick need

to eradicate Obama’s legacy. He thinks if he wins one he’ll cancel out Obama’s. I don’t believe for a moment Trump gives a rat’s ass about the award or what it stands for. He just has an obsessive need to negate the black man who made fun of him. He’s like a heroin addict who can’t get his fix.

[twodogsbarking]

13. Very well put.

[Gimpyknee]

16. In 50 years we'll learn that Trump was not a nominee.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee does not release the names of people or organizations nominated for any particular year until fifty years after the fact. Those MAGA morons who argue that Trump deserved the prize after ending seven wars and certainly after bringing an end to the conflict in Gaza are exactly that, morons. Trump hasn’t ended seven wars. We are not even certain that he has ended the conflict in Gaza. The last day for nominations for this year’s prize was 31 January of this year, so whatever is going to happen in Gaza is moot.

[Hekate]

17. Cogent. Intelligent. Well-informed.

Thank you.

[MichMan]

18. Yassar Arafat was a previous recipient n/t

[niyad]

20. And that has exactly what to do with the point of the OP?

[niyad]

19. Thank you. An important distinction.

[MineralMan]

21. It's much like His MAGAsty saying he always wanted to win a Purple Heart.

Again, that military decoration is not something you win. It is awarded to honor a US military person wounded or killed in wartime. Trump wanted to "win" a Purple Heart. Same principle.

[niyad]

25. That one always puzzled me. It was as if he had no clue how one came

to be awarded a Purple Heart, including that one had to be IN the military, not a draft dodger. Having that veteran actually give his Purple Heart to TRAITOR made me wonder if replicas were sold on ebay.

[MineralMan]

27. Truly, I don't think he actually knows. Or he has forgotten.

He doesn't live in the same space the rest of us do.

[NNadir]

26. It is nevertheless a very common locution to "Win the Nobel Prize."

I have personally encountered Nobel Laureates in talks where they have been described as follows, "Richard Roberts won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1993..." during the introduction.

Grammar policing against common locutions to steal a phrase from someone who died before the prize was even conceived is likely to be as successful as "railing against a thunderstorm" or as Abraham Lincoln put it in the same era "As effective as the Pope's bull against a climate."

In general all of humanity wins as a result of the work of Nobel Laureates, with some minor exceptions. I agree that nobody loses.

No one, I might add, is interviewed to win a baseball game, a card game, or for that matter, the lottery.

It is worthy of note that no one applies to win the lottery unless it involves buying a ticket.

I often kid with my son by telling him that Malala "won" the Nobel Prize when she was 17. Therefore at 26 he's late. Of course he'll only "win" if humanity wins by his actions.

I agree that no one "loses" a Nobel Prize, but this case is a function of having a complete idiot running a dying world power thinking he could apply for one, even demand one. I don't think that grammar policing should preclude us from the opportunity of calling the Orange Pedophile in the White House a "loser."

Normal human beings cannot lose the prize but highly prominent amoral narcissists can and should "lose" in a sense of their inflated self regard being exposed as such.

It's all a joke, not a particularly funny one, but a joke all the same.

If it's any consolation to grammar cops, the Nobel Prize committees refer to the prize as being "awarded," and the, um, "winners" as Laureates.

[MineralMan]

28. As you note, we should take our cues from the Nobel Prize Committee.

As for language, I'm a stickler about using language that is not ambiguous. Since I made my living from writing, I had to be pretty careful.

[NNadir]

33. William Faulkner was a writer too...

...and he "won" the Nobel Prize by stepping outside being a stickler for language.

Personally I often reflect that great literature often offers deliberate ambiguity.

There is a certain passage in Hermann Hesse's Demian that I struggled many years to translate into English. It cannot be effectively translated, I decided, because of its ambiguity. I thus chose language that reflected what it meant to me, what I think it means, as opposed to what Hesse may have wanted to express.

To my mind ambiguity is a cause for thinking more profoundly about a work. To my mind the greatest line that Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote, the sentence, "Listen.," is powerful for both being as succinct and as ambiguous as is possible. (To my mind "Slaughterhouse Five" was a Nobel worthy work, either for literature or peace, but nobody's interested in what I think.)

I don't believe there is much confusion about describing the Nobel Prize as being "won."

There are certainly disputes about people who should have been awarded the Nobel Prize but weren't, but a linguistic punctilio about how to describe an awardee or Laureate or winner is of less profound importance.

The Nobel Committes are composed of human beings and are hardly infallible or even just. That Lise Meitner wasn't awarded one reflects as much, as is the more widely acknowledged case of Rosalind Franklin. These decisions call into question the value of the Prize, but I think we can all agree that awarding one to the orange pedophile felon would have been fatal to what the Prize was supposed to evoke.

[Totally Tunsie]

29. Wonderful essay, MM.

[MineralMan]

31. You're very kind to say so.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

30. True

But Trump's sense of entitlement is sickening

[MineralMan]

32. Pretty much everything connected to trump is sickening.