A lot of people are bent out of shape that President Trump did not get the Nobel Peace Prize, considering his extraordinary record of bringing peace. The Abraham Accords alone, during his first term, should have put him at the top of the heap. And now that, in the nine months of his presidency, he’s ended five...no, six...no, no, maybe seven wars (I’ve lost count), that should make him the all-time winner in Nobel Peace Prize history. However, the Nobel committee is not a serious organization, so the real compliment is its disrespect.

Lots of people take the Nobel Peace Prize seriously. I don’t belong to that club. The Norwegian Nobel Committee (“NNC”) was a joke long before it awarded a prize to Barack Obama in 2009 simply because he was Barack Obama, the “lightbringer.” Ultimately, nothing Obama did over his official eight-year term and his unofficial four-year Biden term brought peace anywhere, including domestically.

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Over the decades since the committee announced its first prize in 1901 (which comes with a nice cash award), the prize committee has awarded innumerable “peace” prizes to people who have been singularly undeserving, whether because they were bad people or because they were useless people ineffectually chasing pipe dreams.

The prizes are the annual brainchildren of the NNC, which consists of five members whom the Norwegian Parliament appoints. The obvious question is this: Why in the world should five Norwegians who would be nobodies on the world stage but for their place on the committee have such sway in people’s hearts and minds? This is just a residue of the early 20th-century progressive fantasy of the elite’s alleged ability to identify and shape perfection.

I can guarantee you that you’ve never heard of the five people currently on the NNC. They are:

• Anne Enger, former Leader of the Centre Party and Minister of Culture. Appointed for the period 2018–2020, and reappointed for the period 2021–2026.
• Asle Toje (Vice Chair), foreign policy scholar. Appointed for the period 2018–2023, reappointed for the period 2024–2029.
• Kristin Clemet, former Conservative Party cabinet member who previously represented Oslo in Norwegian Parliament. Appointed for the period 2021–2026.
• Jørgen Watne Frydnes (Chair), businessman and nonprofit leader, appointed for the period 2021–2026.
• Gry Larsen, former Foreign Affairs Secretary of Norway. Appointed for the period 2024–2029

Reading those names, I’m reminded of Alice’s response when the Queen of Hearts insisted that she be beheaded:

”Who cares for you?” said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) [sic] “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

At which point the spell was broken, Alice woke up, and life went back to normal. The opinion of five former Norwegian politicians and academics should be a backwater matter, not something of national import.

Over the years, this august committee, in addition to giving the prize to Obama for the mere wonder of his existence, has repeatedly awarded it to people with good intentions but no actual accomplishments. For example, Ferdinand Buisson and Ludwig Quidde won in 1927 “for their contribution to the emergence in France and Germany of a public opinion which favours peaceful international cooperation.” Thirteen years later, Germany invaded France.

Desmond Tutu, a self-identified socialist and a manifest antisemite in the garb of a man of God, got the prize in 1984, while Yasser Arafat, an utterly unrepentant communist and Islamic terrorist, got the prize in 1994. In 2007, Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got the prize for their grift about climate change.

The NCC has also had some bees in its bonnet. The International Red Cross has won the Nobel Peace Prize three times, the most won by a single organization. This is the same Red Cross that did nothing for Jews in Nazi controlled territories, but it got a prize in 1944 anyway. I happen to despise the organization, which took 60 years before it would admit Israel to the organization (having already long before admitted Muslim nations), and, most recently, did nothing for the hostages trapped for months and years in Gaza’s underground torture chambers.

Another organization the NNC just loves is the UN, an organization that has done nothing useful over its existence, especially recently. When I think of the UN, I think of financial corruption, child abuse, and overt antisemitism. But the NNC has awarded 14 prizes to the UN, its branches, and individuals associated with the UN. None of the prizes were for actually achieving peace but for hoping for peace (and an end to climate change). Instead, the awards reveal progressive fever dreams, not reality.

Of course, the NNC desperately wants a non-nuclear world. Sadly, this is another pipe dream, but the NNC keeps giving that prize to people and groups who have not created a non-nuclear world but who really want one. It’s seems to be useless to explain to the NNC types that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

It’s those good intentions that are the theme behind the awards the NNC doles out: If you have good progressive intentions, regardless of actual accomplishments, you stand an excellent chance of winning. In this way, the NNC is like the cheering section at an athletic event. It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s just how loudly you root for the home team.

The farce of the NNC is when it’s faced with someone of actual accomplishments, someone who has ended numerous wars, whether long-running, just exploding, or threatening to take down the whole world. Then, the committee balks. It’s much easier to applaud unicorn fantasies and cheer for your team than to give the award to a person of actual accomplishment whom you might dislike.

Maria Corina Machado, who received the prize this year, sounds like a wonderful and courageous woman...but she hasn’t achieved any peace at all. And while I don’t begrudge her the prize money and I admire her bravery, even she rightly realizes that, if peace comes to her country, which a communist despot is despoiling, it will be Donald Trump who makes it happen.

Groucho Marx, when he decided to quit the Friars Club, famously sent a telegram saying that he was resigning because he “wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” It’s a cute line, but the correct line, at least when it comes to Trump and the Nobel Prize, is that no one should want to belong to a club for peace that won’t have Trump as a member.