Video footage circulating on social media showing ENDF forces deliberately destroying grain stored in Amhara farmers’ warehouses stopped me cold. If you were challenged to write an essay on this sadistic act, what would your take be? How would you title it—The Banality of Cruelty in a Militarized State? When the State Trains Young Men to Laugh at Hunger?

For me, this footage reveals far more than a single atrocity. It exposes something deeply rotten—structural, inherited, and unresolved—at the core of an empire called Ethiopia.

Please bear with me. Stay with me for a brief but unflinching analysis of what lies beneath the surface.