No One Is Competent

Usually it takes a whole presentation to prove that a ruler did a poor job.  One must look at battles lost or economic decline or large trends of their reign before making a judgement, but sometimes, just sometimes, the fact that a ruler was laughably bad is blindingly obvious, like if they only last 49 days.  This is the story of Liz Truss.

Azalea made a movie.  Go watch it: https://youtu.be/jbSveTQziTo

In this episode we're taking a look at the struggle of Saint Domingue's revolutionaries that resulted in the eventual collapse of French rule and the conclusion of the most succesful slave revolt in history.

Within the system of France once lied the colony of Saint Domingue, on which existed one of the most demented societies known to man.  Today we explain the brittleness of Saint Domingue and how its failure led to the greatest slave revolt in human history, which founded the nation of Haiti.

The third and final part of our look at the US presidents.

We continue our crusade through presidential mediocrity.

Holiday special folks.  We're doin all the U.S. presidents, every single one. Sit back, relax and take a drink every time we say "this could be an entire episode", Azalea interrupts Jae or we make a pointless reference you don't understand.

EVE Online is a space-based MMORPG that since 2003 has been host to a dynamic, ever-evolving user-driven world replete with stories of warfare, conquest, and betrayal. In many ways the history of EVE's universe mirrors that of our own, and in any case this is a history worth retelling. On this somewhat unusual episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be diving into the strange and entertaining world of this remarkable video game.

Of all the conflicts throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, perhaps none is more... odd than that of the Second Coalition. From heavily armed academic expeditions to dramatic marches through the Alps, this conflict - and the invasion of Egypt that led into it - had just about everything. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the entirety of the War of the Second Coalition from 1798 to 1801.

The word "baseball" is one that conjures up an array of different images and thoughts. For many the sport that is acclaimed as the "America's national pastime" is associated with tradition and legacy. Plenty of modern fans however think of the game as a game defined by statistics and models. One thing that is common in both views the baseball, however, is cheating. From corking to doping, cheating has a long and fabled history in the game of baseball, one that we'll be delving into on this episode of "No One is Competent."

The relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution has long been a point of discussion amongst those interested in the history of the Revolution. For the early Marxists Napoleon's rise to power served as a cautionary tale as to how a popular military leader could subvert the revolution, yet in Napoleon's own mind he was the revolution. What is certain is that Napoleon was a product of the French Revolution, helped save the French Revolution, and ultimately aided in bringing an end to the French Revolution. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we're taking a look at the early life of Corsican general and his role in the defense and ultimate downfall of the French Directory.

Governors are an often overlooked part of the American political landscape. One can make a fair argument that the lives of most Americans are more directly influenced by the actions of their governor than those of their president, yet many would struggle to describe their state governor beyond simply naming what party they belong to. On this episode we're taking a look at tenure of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who's currently up for reelection this November.

As a warning, this is our most directly political episode to date - as in, we're delving into party and electoral politics here, and we have our own opinions. This won't be the norm for us going forward, but we believe this episode was worth making for reasons that we cover throughout its duration.

The War of the First Coalition was fought over a course of 5 years and involved almost all of Europe's great powers. The events of this conflict shaped the course of the French Revolution and set the stage for the future Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts. Yet few today know much of this war, allowing for misconceptions to make their way into the popular understanding of it. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the entirety of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1797.

Few events in western history are as well-studied yet commonly misunderstood as the French Revolution. In this episode we hope to clear things up and lay the groundwork for future episodes by covering both the political developments within France from 1789 to 1794 and the military campaigns of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1794. 

The French Revolution is arguably the most studied event in western historiography alongside the World Wars. Perhaps no other upheaval has had so much of an influence on the way we think about politics and society. Yet the Revolution was not a predestined affair, instead it was the result of both the structural problems of the Ancien Regime and the decisions of the Bourbon monarchs who failed to address the issues facing France. Today we are looking at life of the most infamous Bourbon of them all, King Louis XVI.

The story of military history is full of brilliant technological innovations. From the recurve bow to the main battle tank, humans have continued to come up with increasingly efficient ways of killing one another. Yet for every great invention there are dozens of duds - technological dead ends, creations ahead of their time, and all-round bad ideas. Today we're looking at one of those more ignominious creations, a submarine that killed more of its own crew than the enemy: the Confederate States of America's H. L. Hunley.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 remains one of the most famous events in naval history, yet the fate of England's equally disastrous attempt at seeking revenge on Spain the year afterwards has largely faded from popular memory. In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering we are covering the English Armada, one of the greatest defeats in the history of England's navy.

While history is full of famous battles and campaigns, only a few naval actions have managed to remain widely known long after they took place. The Spanish Armada of 1588 ranks near the top of that select group of events. In England it's cast as a critical moment in the development of the Royal Navy, the institution that more than any other would be responsible for asserting the might of the British Empire across the globe in the subsequent centuries. Elsewhere the defeat of Spain's "Invincible Armada" is remembered as a prime example of military failure. In reality, the events of 1588 were arguably less decisive and certainly far more complicated than what is commonly remembered. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the history of the Spanish Armada and its fateful voyage.

Prohibition is perhaps one of the strangest and most misunderstood episodes in American history. The entire nation turned their back on their most beloved vice - or at least, that's what was supposed to happen. Instead, the 18th Amendment, brought about by intentions both good and bad, led to 13 years of organized crime and lawbreaking on vast scale and an increase in police authority that remains with us to this day. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we're talking about the rise and fall of the failed experiment that was prohibition.

Rome at the dawn of the first century AD was an empire on the rise. As the civil wars of the late Republican period faded into the past, the new government of Augustus Caesar looked set to assert its will on an ever-growing amount of territory and peoples. Yet in 9 AD the Roman Army suffered a defeat so total that it permanently altered the fate of Roman expansion on an entire frontier. On this episode of No One is Competent we're discussing one of the most important battles in European history, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

According to many of Silicon Valley's brightest minds the "cloud" is the future of just about everything. So why not let consumers use it to play console video games, freeing them of the need to actually buy those bulky devices themselves? That certainly was a part of the thought process behind Google's Stadia service... but as it turns out, it seems as if the market quite wasn't on the same page as Google itself. On this slightly more light-hearted episode of No One is Competent, we're taking a look at Google Stadia and the history of cloud gaming.

People around the world are used to expecting a certain level of corruption from their leaders. Greed and self-interest are a part of the universal human experience. What most people aren't used to, however, is the idea that the leader of their country may be subservient to a shadowy religious figure that has been manipulating their life for over three decades. Join us for this episode of "No One is Competent" as we go over the Park Geun-hye scandal, one of the most intriguing and bizarre events in South Korean politics.

America's presidential elections are notoriously byzantine in their complexity, with thousands of counties all counting votes to report to states that then select electors that themselves vote for the president in a process dating back to the late 18th century. In spite of all of this complexity, for the most part elections end up, well, working. Every now and then, though, the system throws up a result that is close or questionable enough that the power to decide the next President of the United States ends up being thrown into the hands of the other two branches of government. In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be discussing the 2000 American presidential election, one of the most infamous elections in recent memory.

We tend to think of big wars as turning points in the history of nations. Battles and campaigns are picked apart at length, and how and why one side wins or loses is subject of much discussion. What comes after these wars, however, is often overlooked. The Civil War is a famous turning point in American history, as its outcome determined whether the nation would exist as a whole or remain split in two, yet the period that followed the surrender of the South was just as important in determining how our society looks and operates. "Reconstruction" was meant not only to bring the Confederacy back into the Union but to remake its society in a more fair, more equal manner. The failures Reconstruction would instead ensure the continued existence of system based entirely on white supremacy, the effects of which continue to be felt to this day.

Of all the ills to spring up in the aftermath of the first world war, perhaps none were as ruinous as the ideology known as fascism. As political extremism spread throughout Europe like a plague, fascist parties, often with the cooperation of traditional conservative and business interests, threatened numerous governments and in some cases successfully gained power for themselves. Yet across the Atlantic America remained relatively safe from fascism, her democratic ideals safeguarded by centuries of constitutional democracy. Or so the story goes - but how true is that story? In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll look at one of the strangest events in American political history, the "Business Plot" of 1933, and examine both the historical context of this supposed scheme and the evidence for and against its significance.

For over half a century Boeing dominated the commercial aviation industry. Boeing's jet airplanes have carried billions of people in almost every country, and in the process the company built a reputation for safety and solid engineering. It was thus a shock to the world when not one but two of Boeing's latest airliner crashed in a matter of months in late 2018 and early 2019. A look at the decisions that lead to these tragedies reveals how a shifting corporate culture that put profit above engineering and a regulatory body that ceded authority to those that it was meant to be regulating combined to result in the deaths of 346 people. Join us on this episode of "No One is Competent" as we discuss the Boeing 737 MAX.

The year is 1204 AD. Over 800 years after its consecration, the great city of Constantinople, the wealthiest and largest metropolis in all of Europe, lies in ruins. Flames burn through its streets as men in armour pick through its palaces, churches, and even tombs searching for plunder. Constantinople was medieval Europe's greatest connection to its ancient past, a city where much of the knowledge and art of classical Greece and Rome lived on, a wealth that its new masters view as mere prizes to be converted into coinage or shipped off to Italy, France, and beyond. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be talking about the decline of the Eastern Rome and the Fourth Crusade, two stories which would intersect one another in a violent, brutal manner and end up nearly destroying one of Eurasia's oldest empires.

Trust the plan. The great awakening. Where we go one, we go all. All of these slogans and more came to represent one of the most conspiratorial and insidious political movements in American political history: QAnon. In the first "No One is Competent" episode on Q, we discussed the conditions that lead to the creation of this movement. In this second part, we'll go over the history and evolution of QAnon itself, and what effects it has had on both its most ardent believers and the rest of society.

The US Capitol Building. 175,170 square feet that house the seat of legislative branch of the most powerful nation on Earth. For over two centuries the Capitol has stood as a symbol of American law and governance. For it to be breached and desecrated in a time of peace is almost unimaginable, yet on January 6th, 2021, that is exactly what happened. Join us on this special bonus episode of "No One is Competent" as we dive into the series of bad decisions and faulty assumptions that led to the most serious assault on the Capitol in 207 years.

Q. A single letter that represents an entire movement, one that unites both the fringes of the far-right militia movement and the most conspiratorial sections of the internet with mainstream conservative sentiment. We could spend ages talking about the many outlandish and ultimately incorrect predictions credited to the supposed "QAnon," but it's worth looking at just where this movement came from and what conditions have allowed it to flourish in modern American society. In many ways the story of QAnon spans decades and involves countless actors, from Barry Goldwater to Christopher Poole. On this first part of the "No One is Competent" look at QAnon we'll be exploring the origins of QAnon.

"Stalingrad." The mere name of the place evokes imagery of violence, death, and grim desperation. From August 1942 through February 1943 over a million soldiers and civilians would be killed, wounded, or captured in one of the largest battles in human history. At the end of the day, however, the Soviet Union stood triumphant, having inflicted upon Nazi Germany their greatest defeat at that point in the war. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll follow up our discussion on Operation Barbarossa by looking at the decisions and events that resulted in the destruction of German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII, codename Operation Barbarossa, was the single largest military operation in human history. On the morning of June 22 well over a hundred Wehrmacht divisions smashed into the USSR. This same army that had spent the previous years overrunning Poland, Denmark, France, Norway, etc had its sights set on the expanses of the east. Things, however, did not exactly go according to plan. What was meant to a quick lightning war would turn into one of the most brutal, slogging campaigns in human history, and one which would see the eventual defeat of those who launched it. Join us on "No One is Competent" as we examine the first 6 months of the Eastern Front and the decisions that led to it.

Operation Eagle Claw - a daring special forces mission conducted deep behind enemy lines to rescue innocent American civilians - had all the hallmarks of an action movie story. Save for the part when it failed almost immediately as it began. The demise of Eagle Claw is often blamed simply on a series of mechanical failures and pilot errors, but a closer look at the planning and execution of the operation reveals a story of an ad-hoc, rushed plan that was beset by flaws and built on overly optimistic assumptions. Join us on this episode of "No One is Competent" as we dissect the military's failed attempt to resolve the Iran hostage crisis.

On September 11th, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airliners in the US and used them to kill almost 3,000 civilians. The events of 9/11 would lead to both a global war on terror and perhaps the most expensive manhunt in human history, the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In spite of his notoriety, bin Laden's history and the mistakes made both by him and those seeking to stop his plans and eventually capture or kill him are often poorly understood by the general public. Join us for this episode of "No One is Competent" as we go through the events that lead to the deadliest terrorist attack in US history and the hunt for the mastermind behind it.

Sometimes the deadliest events in human history are ones that were not meant to be tragic. Sometimes plans laid out with good - or at least, neutral - intentions cost the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. Perhaps no single event in modern history illustrates this phenomenon better than the "Great Leap Forward," a set of policies enacted in 1950s China that resulted in a famine of almost unfathomable proportions. Join us on this episode of "No One is Competent" as we discuss the arrogance, paranoia, cruelty, and incompetence that lead to this disaster.

The Mongols are remembered as perhaps the greatest conquerors in world history. Great nations throughout Eurasia felt the wrath of Genghis Khan and his successors as they built the largest land empire in human history. In that light, the failed attempts of Kublai Khan to subdue Japan are a stark outlier, so much so that the two Mongol defeats are commonly just viewed as being the result of poor weather and nothing else. A closer look at the events of their invasions of Japan reveals a more complicated story, however — one of folly, overreach, and naturally, incompetence. Join us on “No One is Competent” as we look at the Mongol invasions of Japan of 1274 and 1281 AD.

Popular discourse on Afghanistan is steeped in mysticism, with the land ascribed by many almost supernatural immunity to foreign invasion. The idea that Afghanistan is and has always been the “Graveyard of Empires” can result in us both ignoring the successful conquests of the region by foreign powers and failing to analyze the errors of those who were unsuccessful. While most Americans think of the war in Afghanistan as something that began in 2001, in reality the country has been in a state of armed conflict since 1979. In this episode of “No One is Competent” we’ll be looking at the Soviet-Afghan War, the USSR’s folly that set the stage for decades of violence in Afghanistan.

Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the United States Navy's 7th Fleet is responsible for patrolling some of the most economically and strategically important sea lanes in the world, making it one of the most important elements in the entire US Armed Forces. One can thus imagine the shock when over the course of about three months in 2017 not one but two 7th Fleet destroyers were involved in two separate collisions with commercial vessels, resulting in 17 deaths. On this episode of “No One is Competent” we’ll be discussing both the events behind these disastrous mishaps and the conditions that lead to them being possible.

From the rocks and clubs to swords and guns, humans have been developing weapons for about as long as we’ve existed as a species and using them in a variety of ways — sometimes competently, sometimes not. Nuclear weapons stand at the pinnacle of this quest for evermore destructive implements of death. Built with materials that can kill via the emission of invisible particles and capable of wiping out entire cities, nuclear warheads are a step above anything that came beforehand… yet these devices remain fundamentally at the control of the often clumsy hands of their creators, mankind. Join us today on “No One Is Competent” as we discuss some of the most farcical incidents involving humanity’s most dangerous invention.

The United States Army prides itself on its long record of success on the battlefield, a sentiment built on a genuine history of victories in conventional warfare. Like any military, however, the Army is not invincible, and the those instances that display its mistakes and vulnerabilities often do so in a dramatic manner. On this episode of “No One is Competent” we’ll be talking about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, an event immortalized both as one of the most famous defeats in US military history and one of the last victories of some of America’s most persistent adversaries.

In November of 2001 Rudy Giuliani was the most popular politician in America, seen as defending the nation from foreign threats. In November of 2020 Rudy Giuliani was a national pariah, charged with dismantling the democracy that brought him to power. How did Giuliani rise to glory, and how did he fall so far? Join us on this episode of “No One Is Competent” to find out.

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