Peace got traded like a baseball card.
That's what happened this week at the White House, when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado handed her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Donald Trump. The gesture was symbolic—the Oslo committee quickly clarified that Nobel Prizes aren't transferable—but the damage? That was real.
I sat with this news for a while, turning it over in my mind like a stone worn smooth by too much handling. From my wheelchair here in Tirana, I watched the footage. Two figures in the Oval Office, a golden medal changing hands, camera flashes. The whole scene felt like watching someone auction off a family heirloom at a flea market.
A Medal Bouncing Like a Ping Pong Ball
The Nobel for Peace, once a universal symbol of dignity and moral courage, has become—to borrow the original Italian phrasing—"una pallina da ping pong," a ping pong ball bouncing from Venezuela to the United States .
Think about that image for a moment. A prize meant to honour those who build bridges between enemies, who risk everything for reconciliation, now ricocheting across continents as a geopolitical favour.
Trump's response on Truth Social tells you everything you need to know about his priorities: "María has given me the Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. A wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!"
The centre of the story isn't Venezuela. It isn't human rights. It isn't democratic transition.
The centre is him.
The Obsession That Finally Got Its Trophy
Here's the thing about Trump and the Nobel: he's wanted one for years. This isn't speculation—it's documented obsession. And now, like a child who finally gets their way after throwing enough tantrums, he's got his prize. Sort of .
Machado framed the gesture with historical grandeur. She invoked General Lafayette, Simón Bolívar, George Washington—two hundred years of symbolism compressed into a single moment . The rhetoric was polished, the parallels carefully chosen.
But rhetoric doesn't change reality.
This is a president who, at this very moment, is threatening to take Greenland and escalating tensions with Cuba . A president whose foreign policy reads less like diplomacy and more like a real estate acquisition strategy.
Where the Error Actually Began
Let me be direct here, because I think this matters: the mistake didn't start at the White House. It started in Oslo .
When the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, they gave it to a leader deeply embedded in geopolitical alignment. Someone tied closely to American power. Someone who has openly sided with figures like Netanyahu—a man accused of war crimes and overseeing what many call an unpunished genocide .
I'm simplifying complex political dynamics here for clarity, but the core problem remains: the Nobel for Peace shouldn't go to those fighting political battles within power structures. It should go to those who step outside those structures entirely.
To those who build bridges, not strengthen alliances.
To those who defend lives, not justify "necessary" wars.
The People Who Actually Deserved It
You want to know who should receive the Nobel for Peace? Let me paint you a picture.
There are activists who enter conflict zones unarmed, carrying nothing but conviction. Journalists who've told uncomfortable truths and paid for it with prison cells, torture, exile. Women who've saved thousands from wartime rape, human trafficking, ethnic cleansing—often without protection, without recognition, without anyone knowing their names .
These people don't seek visibility. They don't want symbolic handshakes in gilded rooms.
They don't "use" peace as a political tool. They practice it as a way of life .
Can you hear the difference? It's the difference between performance and purpose. Between a medal you display and a cause you embody.
What Peace Actually Sounds Like
I think about this a lot, actually. What does peace sound like?
It's not camera shutters in the Oval Office. It's not triumphant posts on social media. It's quieter than that. It sounds like a mother in a refugee camp finally sleeping through the night. Like children laughing in a schoolyard that used to be a battlefield. Like the absence of gunfire, which is its own kind of music.
Peace isn't a trophy. It's not something you hang on a wall or pass between world leaders like a party favour.
Peace is work. Unglamorous, exhausting, often invisible work.
The Symbolic Damage Is Done
The Oslo committee can clarify all they want. They can issue statements reminding everyone that Nobel Prizes aren't transferable . And technically, they're right.
But symbolism doesn't care about technicalities.
The image is out there now. Trump holding that medal, grinning. Machado beside him in white, the whole scene bathed in the warm light of power celebrating itself.
That image will outlast any official correction. It will circulate, be shared, be remembered. And every time someone sees it, the Nobel for Peace loses a little more of its meaning.
A Future Where Peace Means Something Again
So where do we go from here?
I don't have easy answers. From my position—both literally in this wheelchair and figuratively as someone who watches the world from the margins—I can only offer observations.
The Nobel Committee faces a choice. They can continue awarding prizes to figures entangled in power politics, watching their honour erode into irrelevance. Or they can return to first principles. Find the nameless activists. The dangerous truth-tellers. The bridge-builders who work in shadows.
Peace shouldn't be an accessory. It shouldn't be merchandise. It shouldn't be a diplomatic gift exchanged between allies .
But today, apparently, it is.
And that's the saddest part of this whole surreal episode. Not that Trump got his trophy—he was always going to find a way. The sad part is that we've collectively allowed peace to become something you can give away.
I'm Gerd Dani, writing from Tirana as President of Free AstroScience. We usually explore the cosmos here, but sometimes the most important distances aren't measured in light-years—they're measured in the gap between what we say we value and how we actually behave.
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