Most of us have described President Peepaw in fairly common ways such as narcissistic or perhaps cognitive dissonance. Maybe it was congenital ineptitude, although I'm pretty sure I made that last one up.
However, please begin using the proper term for what we are witnessing in realtime. It is called the
Dunning-Kruger Effect and in 1999, was defined by two Ph.D. psychologists, David Alan Dunning and Justin Kruger.
Per Wikipedia, tell me if this definition sounds like any popular vote losers you may know:
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.
As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others." Hence, the corollary to the Dunning–Kruger effect indicates that persons of high ability tend to underestimate their relative competence and erroneously presume that tasks that are easy for them to perform also are easy for other people to perform.
Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was formulated in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority has been referred to in literature throughout history.
The not-so-medical-terminology version of that is this: When someone is so stupid that they cannot realize that they are stupid, they begin to blame those that are not stupid for not recognizing how bright the actually stupid person is. (The corollary says that those that are very bright tend to underestimate themselves because they tend to see all sides and realize that they are not experts at everything.)
Everything this guy has said as President (and, in most cases, not as President), follows this principle.
From last night's disastrous Phoenix gathering of deplorables:
"And just so you know from the Secret Service, there aren't too many people outside protesting, OK. That I can tell you."
There is
video proof that the estimated indoor crowd is roughly 4,000, roughly half the size of the outdoor protesting crowd.
"The words were perfect. They only take out anything they can think of, and for the most part, all they [the media] do is complain. But they don't put on those words. And they don't put on me saying those words."
That is the orange Julius Caesar talking about his response to Charlottesville.
"How good is Hannity? How good is Hannity? And he's a great guy, and he's an honest guy. And 'Fox and Friends in the Morning' is the best show, and it's the absolute, most honest show, and it's the show I watch."
Wow. So you watch the shows that flatter you at any cost. And everything else is fake. Because you are the best. This sounds like a certain psychological effect in action.
So please, can we try to get some traction on just what the Dunning-Kruger effect is and begin using it to describe what we are seeing? It doesn't make it better; rather, it makes it a documented and peer reviewed medical condition that may aid in proving that someone isn't fit for a particular position. It’s not that any sane person needs additional proof, but keep in mind those that need to be convinced.
EDIT: It’s just one of the many disorders Peepaw has, to be sure, but it is an important one that is absolutely obvious once you know what it is.