Non Compos Mentis--A Sign of the Times?

Imagine a churlish gossip, once upon a time, hanging over the backyard fence while pausing in her taking in of the laundry and thus opining to her most appreciative busybody neighbor: "I hear tell that his honor at court even this day has declared that drunken lout of a husband of Mrs. Whatshername a regular nincompoop! Tsk, tsk. Ain't it the way of the world these days?"

Now, no one can claim to produce a more apt beginning for one of the finer and more useful epithets in our English lexicon than this. For who can mistake an instant understanding when this description is pronounced upon the antics of a regular nincompoop?

In fact, these times seem to have produced a downright cult of nincompoopery. And the truth is there does not appear to be any psychical sort of vaccination in the offing for the pandemic of nincompoops now plaguing even our very communication devices.