The casual hijacking of the Ethiopian plane shows how incidental if useless terrorism can be, and perhaps too, how inured we’ve become to the causes of terrorism in the first place.

Here are the particular facts that caught my attention:

The hijacking was effortless. A 31-year old unarmed pilot who had been flying professionally for only five years was able to go wherever he wanted to go, with 200 passengers in tow foiling a full complement of crew, by engaging mechanisms and techniques designed to thwart a hijacking!

Exactly. Doors to the cockpit now lock so completely that it’s impossible to knock them down short of exploding the plane. This was one of the brilliant ideas of our great thinkers after they were rattled by 9-11.

So the copilot waited until the pilot went to the bathroom, and then locked himself in …control.

Next: The hijacker was not a professional criminal, guerilla or terrorist.

The New York Times account perfectly documents a really scared young man who once in control sort of lost it. Twice the plane “bumped” so hard oxygen masks were deployed, and his voice over the intercom went falsetto with false threats.

We can only speculate who he is. Unfortunately, his very Ethiopian name doesn’t give us much insight into his clan, and the authoritarian Ethiopian government is not going to help us find out.

So speculate I will. Professional Ethiopians tend to get married almost as late as Americans do, today, and many have no children. Young international pilots worldwide tend to explore foreign away relationships long before settling down. So I’d guess he’s not married and has little left attaching him to Ethiopia.

Young people throughout Africa are growing restless. Much more than young Americans, they feel the disappointment of the failures of the Arab Spring and the liberalism that emerged after the Great Recession. There is a sense of hopelessness Americans probably should also feel, but don’t.

Ethiopia is a very oppressive country. It always has been, despite the brief celebrity status of Haile Selassie. It’s very much a top-down society, has never stopped being and probably was among the first of true communist states.

But unlike China, for example, there are no popular opposition movements, no forward-thinking heroic human rights activists or passionate conservationists.

Ethiopia has been around a very long time: It’s the only country in Africa to never have been colonized. It survives on ancient, archaic ideas and is ruled with an iron fist by people who are often only vaguely known.

If you cross someone important, you’re toast.

So I speculate that this young kid pilot, schooled and cultured abroad, told a bad joke or cheated on his tax return or piled up a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, and then … freaked. And with some justification. For all those petty infractions, you could be laid up in a putrid jail cell and tortured for years.

Here are other relevant facts to the story:

When the plane left Italian air space and entered Swiss air space, it was being escorted by French and Italian fighter planes with NATO. Where were the Swiss?

“Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend,” a Swiss official told Aljazeera, adding: “It’s a question of budget and staffing.”

Right. Switzerland is safe from terrorists from 9 a.m., Monday, through 5 p.m., Friday, less maternity leaves and personal days. And so long as France and Italy defend Christian values.

His chances for asylum are “slim” according to the chief Swiss detective assigned to the case. And hijacking is a crime in Switzerland punishable by 25 years in jail, which translates to 10 years with good behavior during which he can train to become an airline mechanic.

A decade in a Swiss jail is likely similar to an extended sabbatical at the hotels at Ethiopia’s popular Lake Langano. The guy has probably stashed away most of his savings for the last five years in some foreign account, and in ten he’ll be able to buy a cab franchise in Minneapolis.

Ethiopian wants him extradited, but that’s very unlikely. As junior a staff member a copilot is, he still has some insight into the cloaked world of Ethiopia. The airline is owned and run by the state. It’s among the state’s most precious assets.

There are plenty of folks in the U.S. and elsewhere who would like to buy him a coffee and hear his tale.

Including me.