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I maintain that war in Ethiopia (and the wider Horn) is not inevitable. The current outbreak of war reflects the fact that Ethiopian elites keep choosing war over peace. Unfortunately, despite repeatedly choosing war, Ethiopian leaders continue to enjoy support from a cast of warmongering academics, journalists, public intellectuals, civil society actors, and a whole host of foreign actors — all of whom have long taken sides and become cheerleaders for their respective camps.

In name only. But they are actors.

The anti-intellectual movement of the last quarter century is such a perversion of values that I have trouble recognizing the world today. It's a slap in the face to everything that I believe in, and what society used to value when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s.

Reductionism has consumed tech and the scientific community. Because the wrong people won the internet lottery and promoted their brand of anti-intellectualism to the world, gaining esteem from sycophants hoping to ride their coattails and get rich too.

Now those same billionaires actively work to dismantle the institutions which were once heralded as bastions of democracy. Is it any wonder that peace is crumbling as they conspire to hoard the world's remaining resources? Doubling down on colonization, stealing them from developing nations that we've already victimized, without their consent?

Witnessing Elon Musk become a trillionaire at the same moment that a child somewhere died of dehydration was one of the grossest experiences of my life. We're talking Elysium, District 9, but real. Yet Greta Thunberg is mocked for her activism.

Instead of learning from history and doing better, we're papering over our colonizer past and doubling down on our malfeasance.

What a sick joke the future has become.

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