There is a difference between being ignorant and being stupid.
Einstein probably admitted his ignorance many times; he probably told himself he was stupid many times. But people who fail to admit their ignorance are stupid, and so they continue to be.
A group of MBAs just out of graduate school, sitting in a room watching "The Apprentice," would probably have concluded that Trump was a charlatan and a fraud.
During the Birther Frenzy, people with common sense and not in self-denial of subliminal racism or their past attitudes that were mildly racist would've concluded that Trump represented the lower underbelly of the American Character. I shouldn't get brownie points for saying that I made those conclusions immediately.
So I was stunned that even the losers of the popular vote gave him any votes at all. I had overestimated how far we'd come since the 1960s.
Then, there's Trump's talent. He hasn't any. I conclude that he never did the accounting and filing of his own taxes. Otherwise, he would not have been so stupid as to tell the public that he was a Great Genius for using Carry-Over Loss provisions of the tax-code to deduct his mammoth losses of one year over a twenty-year period. Every retiree with a rental-property who does his own taxes would know all about that.
And there's the "Bidnis-man" Myth. I agree with Warren Buffet that Trump's loss was deplorably bad business. If Buffet decided to visit the Blackjack tables at a casino, he would spend six months to practice card-counting, and risk being thrown out of the casino if discovered to use some crutch to keep track. Trump would get comped by the casino, because he has neither the knowledge, the discipline, or the memory to count cards. In other words, he's not a businessman: he's a Loser.
If he were running as an outsider, he would've realized that he would have to be a "politician" to win without Russian assistance, and he would've stopped campaigning in November 2016. He wouldn't have continued to slap the opposition in the face every other day since then.
The man is fundamentally incompetent, psychologically disordered, unprincipled for his lies and cavalier attitude toward facts. And he doesn't have any real or innovative ideas except these: He believes, because of his "socio-economic class," that he deserves to rule, and that nobody else can do it better. He believes that corruption in government and hob-nobbing with American adversaries is perfectly acceptable. He seems to think that being president is an easy job. And -- after all -- he believes that he doesn't need to provide leadership to those of us who didn't vote for him. He thinks it's just better to repetitively insinuate that we don't exist.
As to his education at a military academy in his youth, any kid of modest means might have turned up at a juvenile detention center, or done time in a gladiator academy like Chino Corrections. We don't know what behavioral problems prompted his parents to send him to military school, but even as he did, he learned absolutely no discipline, as it is abundantly obvious that he has none.
As Joe Biden suggested, someone should have taken him out behind the gym and beat him into six years of plastic surgery.
Most of all, though, Trump and the inner core of his support are all Bigots.
And . . . . Post Script. I like great movies. One of my favorite westerns was "Tom Horn" featuring Steve McQueen in the title role. There is a scene where Horn enters a Wyoming saloon on a cold day, when John L. Sullivan, the boxer, is visiting the town. Sullivan and others at the bar are discussing the American Indian leader, Geronimo, whom Horn had assisted in capturing, and Sullivan passed a derogatory remark about the Apache. Horn then turns around, and proclaims "Geronimo was so Great, you'd have to stand on my shoulders just to kiss his ass!"
Barack Obama was so great, Trump would need a firetruck ladder just to polish his shoes.
THE END