How hard can it possibly be?

In their defense, they had no idea that one guy had a mindworm queen inside him.

I really want to see the follow up to that thread. They sent a signal and then... nada.

Also just love this roundhouse kick. (crescent kick, apologies)
- Ahem, that's a crescent kick. It's kind of the bitch slap of kicks.
- Word on the street was that it was supposed to be a setup for the Borg
He was a commander, not an admiral.
- And then Riker blew up his head.

No one that would do that job well wants the role.

Exhibit A: Admiral Kirk. Spent most of his admiralty getting back into the center chair lol
- And after that, most of the "good" admirals we meet are commanding their own ships still.
Very good point...

I dunno.

How do we select politicians? Maybe they do something similar?

I suspect a lot of "evil admirals" were promoted by votes from, or just to appease, reactionary political movements.
Yeah kinda. In politics there's going to be scenarios someone has to choose between doing the right thing or doing what's best for their career. And yeah, militaries have politics at the top, just not the left-right politics that's common in a democracy. These political scenarios filter out the "do the right thing" people and prevent them from advancing to the top. Not all of the time, but often enough that there's a higher percentage of shitty people in leadership positions then you'll find in the general population.

Maybe the way they deal with bad captains is to "kick them upstairs" to admiral

Or all the competent officers refuse to take desk jobs when they can fly around space enjoying all the green women (and men) they can find.

Stupid question: What admirals are we talking about here?

Here are the admirals I remember from 90s trek

Janeway, who got the job because she was hyper competent at killing Borg.
Picard, who we can assume is generally good at his job
That dude who was a dick to Riker, who ended up being really good at his job
Ross, who was generally good at his job, even if Section 31 kinda did whatever they wanted
That admiral who showed up and told Picard he was an idiot for not using Hugh to kill the Borg
Those admirals that were all secretly alien worms or something
Tom Paris's dad, who was just kinda there
The lady running the inquisition, who clearly got the role in no small part due to her father
That other admiral who ended the inquisition trials after he saw what I shitshow the entire thing was.

In general they seemed pretty good at their job.

Point 3: Admiral Edward Jellico. You come to our house, you get my admiral's name right!
Admiral Patrick was also brilliant
Janeway, who got the job because she ~~was hyper competent at killing~~ commited genocide against the Borg.
- I feel like you lose your right to complain about being victims of genocide after the second or third alien race you yourself genocide, especially when your entire race is essentially a bunch of enslaved thralls who almost always bounce the second they get free will back.
- That's like saying that eradicating a virus is genocide

That's what hierarchies do to a mf

Also note that there are no non-human badmirals.

Closest might be General Oh from PIC.

Admiral Pasalk may not have been evil, but he was a jerk.
General Oh is... idk how to say this without giving spoilers, but she's definitely a baddy.
Spies don't count lol

didn't think about that, but I think you're right
There are hardly any non-human admirals at all though, so it's not a significant statistic.
- All the more reason to point out the continued xenophobia still present within the Federation hierarchy... but also to make a light-hearted reference to Arrested Development.

I dont see the issue

-Planetary Union

The good ones commit crimes to get themselves busted back down to captain.

Power corrupts.

We'll have to ask admiral Patrick if he thinks the cream rises to the top.
@ptz