Dear Editor:
We’ve all seen photographs of tinpot dictators posing with their chests bedecked with rows of medals they awarded themselves. Google images of Idi Amin for an example. They honour themselves to feed their insatiable egos.
Such is the case with U.S. President Donald Trump, who insists that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. No doubt the main reason Trump wants that medal is because Presidents Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter each received one.
Trump no more deserves a Nobel Peace Prize than he deserved the Purple Heart medal a supporter once gave him. Trump, who never served in the military, accepted it and said he’d always wanted a Purple Heart. It was an insult to every American soldier who has actually earned that medal.
Awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize would be an insult to every legitimate recipient of that award. It would be like giving a Citizen of the Year Award to a Mafia boss, or the Academy Award for best picture to a porn film, or the Nobel Prize for Science to the inventor of the whoopee cushion, or the Nobel Prize for Literature to the author of a poem that begins with the line, “There once was a girl from Nantucket.”
Trump’s own cronies have nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, he whines that the process is “rigged” against him. If, by some gross circumstance, Trump is actually given a Nobel Peace Prize, the legitimate recipients of a Nobel Prize could hardly be blamed if they were to return their medals in disgust.
A distinguished object of recognition for meritorious achievement would have been tarnished and reduced to the status of cheap junk.
Ed Butts,
Guelph