The Peter Prize Award

The Peter Prize Award

It’s been eternally puzzling why, in this Manichean world, efforts of great worth go unnoticed while slugs receive honors. The vision of Laurence Peter offers a view of hope to ease this lapse. Dr. Peter conceived of a world-view nearly rivaling that of Newton and Einstein. Like those great seers who surmised universal magnetic force and conceived a shape to the universe, Dr. Peter was able to conceive a universal law which could be applied systematically to the entire bureaucratic firmament, past and present. Peter’s Law simply formulates a universal progression of worth so that the inevitable occurs, and “everyone is promoted to his (or her) highest level of incompetency.”

☞ The validity of Peter’s law is inarguable, especially to the unfortunate soul who has marched like Kafka into the office of a bureaucrat in hopes of resolving the least minor request and have said request fumbled beyond recognition. Impossible to tabulate those moments multiplied ad infinitum throughout the entire complex of offices and departments nestled behind glossy windows reaching  by steel and concrete to the heavens— it’s then the Peter Principle shines forth. It stands to the utmost reason how the plenitude of souls existing on every level of bureaucratic participation are operating full tilt in expected capacity, without possibility of promotion, because he or she is already breathing the atmosphere of his or her highest level of incompetency.

☞ Yet there is no prize in the name of such achievement, no academic honors we know of, nor even a free subscription to the New York Times. So Trying Times has chosen to dedicate its efforts, humbly and forthright, in honoring Dr. Laurence Peter’s vision by instituting the Peter Prize.

☞ Trying Times has further eschewed the easy task of bestowing the Peter Prize for past incompetency, such as  George Custer’s final battle. On the contrary, we have set our limits, girded our loins, and presume to enter the fray by choosing the most likely candidate for the big Peter Prize in an election year. The reasoning is as simple as the Peter Principle itself. The highest office in the land, and what is expected from it, defines the greatest incompetency. And no easy task of determination, that.

      “War is Peace,” 1984, George Orwell

The Nobel Peace Prize committee offers a prime example of the pitfalls of incompetence in the actual awarding of an honor demonstrated by selecting a newly elected American president, one with no track record of peace. Afterward, said honoree went on to collect many scalps tucked in his military belt. Not only continuing past wars, but his administration forged on to other conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Took down a government there, and went on to help a prominent American enemy with tools to make nuclear havoc. Not to mention the foment of racial unrest within domestic borders.

☞   The Trying Times Peter Prize Committee does not indulge in fantasy awards. Our estimate, instead, focuses on the one office of top executive and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The question of an award would settle on how incompetent have recent chiefs been, and how future ones might be in the most responsible task of national security.

 

DISTURBING THE PEACE

☞ Once upon a time there was law enforcement against disturbing the peace. When the jazz player Eddie Condon walked his blasting sax out of the club and onto the street, hitting those sexy notes as loud as he could, while leading a parade of noisy fans, the whole bunch of them were arrested for disturbing the peace.

☞  When young Louis Armstrong shot off a gun on a street in New Orleans street, the young scamp was arrested for— you guessed it. Fortunately, Armstrong was put in a juvvy house where he learned to play the sweetest and– yes, most peaceful– sound with his horn, so sweet it might be making Angel Gabriel envious upstairs. And the public inherited that sweet sound by one young scamp disturbing the peace.

☞ The American voting public is now asked to install a candidate into presidential office who believes that what has been witnessed on the streets of major American cities may be considered by one and all, by police as well as military, mayor and governor, as “peaceful protests.”

☞ Bear in mind, however, that competition for the Peter Prize hardly ever offers a shoo-in candidate. There has been in recent history such grandeur of flubs by the chief in office. George Bush’s unprepared foray into Iraq, guided by misinformation due to a lazy staff of watchers– kicked up to their highest levels of incompetence– would make him a candidate. Those who supported the Iraq invasion— all for the wrong reasons, it seems— would freely admit that by the time the error was understood, America was destined to be unduly hung up in that sour region for decades.

☞ But Bush was small potatoes for the Peter prize. In the case of his successor, the self-appointed one to “fundamentally change the country” goes nearly unrivaled in security damage, mainly by working to aid nuclear build-up in Iran, and dumping cash to support it. But that play is a tricky form of incompetence to judge. In his mind and that of his cohorts, maybe he was a success. What better way to fundamentally change our nation than by nuclear explosions– a change not to be hoped for.

☞ President Jimmy Carter’s gift of the Panama Canal is too brief for consideration. Perhaps he thought he was doing a just thing, even though Panama was created for the American-built canal. But when Carter’s follower, William Jefferson Clinton, finished off the coup by allowing Chinese control of the canal, that boosted Billy Jeff’s chances for the Peter Prize.

☞ Clinton’s Chinese relationship alone would have guaranteed him as shoo-in award for the Peter Prize. Not only guaranteed control of the canal, but throwing in the military installations that went with it. That is, not only do the Chinese control the canal the US worked to widen out so that shit shuttle cargoes could get through to suffocate American markets, but they also control the former US bases. Most notably, they control the facility for storage containers; these are the containers, able to be shifted around like shells in a game for storing hidden nuclear delivery systems. Those would be the multiple-head nuclear delivery systems which President Billy Jeff made available in an earlier sellout by declassifying those military systems as commercial: they were merely made into army surplus for sale to Billy Jeff’s newly installed world trade partners. Remembering the missile crisis of the Kennedy administration, the incompetence is awesome when a president makes it so convenient for a known provocateur government to keep missiles in Panama, and no one sqwaking (other than Trying Times and authors such as Bill Geertz and Peter Schweitzer, among others).

 

A STAND-OUT AT LAST

☞ But there arose out of the shadows of the past line-up, the one true Peter Prize contender set uniquely apart from the rest. Nothing says incompetence better than a deserving senator with an accomplishment like Cal Ripkin’s, the ball player who showed up the most times. Nearly fifty years Senator Joseph Biden has shown up. He shows up, and he shows up,  and has seemingly done nothing but bluster. Seemingly. However, the Peter Prize committee is not fooled by his appearance of non-accomplishment. There has been much incompetence accomplished on the senator’s behalf. Let us count the ways.

☞ Plagiarizer of speeches. First, plagiarizing another politician’s speech might be understandable from someone who barely passed his exam. But when he gives drops  from the presidential race because he plagiarized Kennedy and Kinnock, he plagiarizes Joad’s farewell  speech (I’ll be there, maw) from the movie, Grapes of Wrath. That kind of truculent behavior indicates a magnificently incorrigible personality, not to mention a first-rate recommendation for incompetent nincompoop.

☞ Dealing in Delaware, our candidate’s representative state for credit card companies getting their 18 per cento whacko for the po’ folks what owes and lives on credit. Such a fat whack is why all the Vultures de Credit roost in Joe’s state. And ain’t it a kick how our candidate wails for the poor while he helps their credit rate soar?

☞ Boasting publicly how he got the president of Ukraine to knuckle under and stop the investigation on his son Hunter by threatening to withhold American million $$$ aid smackeroons. That way Hunter Biden (the perfect name you don’t have to make up) is  free to continue reaping his meager salary from Ukrainian energy folks.

☞ At almost the same time, Joe is clamoring for impeachment regarding President Trump’s “collusion with Ukraine.” The only competence Biden has demonstrated is comedy.

☞ You can’t make this stuff up, yes, but some of his actions almost defy the category of incompetence. Some of our prize candidates’ mischief is so long range it almost suggests a plan. Biden wreaked havoc at such long distance, like a fart that can only be detected long after being fully released, a subtle fart, and the guilty anus has already moved on. Yet his gifts are forever inhaled. One of them is the classic How-Did-You-Feel? question.

The Trying Times Peter Prize Committee is unaware of anyone before Joe Biden who before asked the question as he did of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas electronic lynch hearing. Perhaps it was already an established line of questioning, who knows? Sensible people try to keep away from courts. But it’s got to be the first time the How-Did-You-Feel? question was used as weight against a Supreme Court candidate. When Ms. Hill expressed her dismay at Thomas’ joking about a pubic hair on his coke can, her feelings then turned for Senator Biden into a matter of state. Jurisprudence hung in the balance. How did she feel when he would say things like that? And today, thank you, Senator Biden, and later champions of justice, it is a viable— if not a critical— consideration. It has been pumped up like a sex doll into a determining factor how a “victim” might feel.

Don’t believe it? Ask Judge Cavanaugh or a thousand other poor saps dinged for false rape accusations or fired for hurting feelings. And if you really want to savor the smell of that irony, think of the our gallant defender of female feelings. Think of our champion for women’s everything, think how he shows his best respect for their feeling by feeling them up, and smelling them, and jostling them, and hugging them, and squeezing them, and possibly raping them.

☞ Our candidate provided strong arm support to the presiding power who helped ravage an already lame healthcare system. And to revive its fruits, as well as his incompetence, Biden promises to resumethe false promises of Obamacare. There can only be one antidote to that disease of progressive abortion:

If you like your president, you can keep your president. Vote Trump.

☞ Our candidate is riding merrily on the party toboggan, careening down the slope of incompetency, where down there at the bottom, every rank of democrat leader in every smoking city allows a disturbing amount of disturbing the peace. Our candidate for the Peter Prize not only condones violating the peace under the name of peaceful protest, but makes the term “peaceful” laughable.

☞ When Eddie Condon was playing his saxophone out loud in the street, yeah, maybe the neighbors had to sleep. But that crowd following the musician outside and making noises of joy, they sound at least tame, if not civilized. But when ol’ fighter Joe refers to looting and burning and even killing as “peaceful protest,” that’s pure comedy coming out the mouth of a bidder for head peace officer of the land. The incompetent sheriff in Smokey and the Bandit is James Bond compared to our candidate.

HOWDY DOODY’S CENTRAL COMMITTEE

☞ Objecting to Lenin’s idea of proletarian rule, Trotsky could already see the way it would go: “Before he finally accepted Lenin’s concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky accurately predicted what would come to pass: “The organization of the party will take the place of the party; the Central Committee will take the place of the organization; and, finally, the dictator will take the place of the Central Committee.” [US News & World Report 28 Aug 1967 “What Stalin Really Did”]

☞ In our little proletarian uprising, there is no way of being certain who might be the “central committee” of the Democrat Party. Maybe Soros and his Davos gang. Maybe Buffalo Bob and Clarabell the Clown. All we on the outside can know is that the entire party, on every level, already acts like a puppet show for a central committee, down to the Polly tick parrots (especially the Never Trumpeteers) and the paparazzi, using the same phrases at the same time as true jarghead propaganda. And their choice of candidate is Howdy Doody all over again, already chosen for being incompetent.

☞ And without reservation the most egregious incompetence of them all: Biden sullies the name of JOE.  A a complete phony in living up to being “a good Joe.” Due to his long underhanded history, that expression is cancelled.

☞ Thus, the Trying Times Peter Prize Committee herewith honors the man who has risen above a sea of candidates, a thriving bureaucracy of competitors, all dependent on the fact that each will, like our choice, be promoted to his or her highest level of incompetence. Joe Biden is not only by far and away the most deserved for the Peter Prize, he is fit for folklore.

☞ Come on, man. Just like Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath— “Whenever there’s a big guy beating up a little guy, I’ll be there, maw.” Just like that, Biden’s name will be spoken whenever a Ukrainian official needs straightening out. Come on, man. Joe’ll be there. When a credit corporation needs a tax shelter, he’ll be there. Whenever a Chinese concern needs a pal, Biden will definitely be there. So many more reasons, but we hold all of the above as sufficient in presenting to China’s friend, the women’s man, plagiarizer and pugilist, Joe Biden. We lovingly grant him, with fullest respect, our mark for the greatest and longest and most various forms of incompetence ever achieved, and those to come: the Big Peter.

JoCo

 

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