Ethiopia: How Ya Like Me Now?

It's an odd thing, especially for people my age who grew up in the 80's watching Live Aid on MTV, to have Ethiopia as the local model of 'not too bad.' The electoral shenanigans there don't really seem that much worse than Cook County, Illinois. The general economy seems better than Detroit's, which really ain't saying much but you get my drift. Also they're only down to the occasional drought, which makes them a bit like central California. When you look at the positives-- host country for the African Union, plenty of water and arable land, reasonable lack of genocide and ethno-religious warfare-- you could almost say it looks kinda like the Garden of Eden. (Of course if you did say that, you'd probably spark a healthy round of ethno-religious warfare.) It seems to me that their biggest problem is an ornery neighbor to the north and a peasantry twisting to the whims of governmental cronyism. Not all that different from Philadelphia when you think about it.