Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

tim, your post above reminds me of how Solzhenitsyn described the Soviet system of control:

And the Kolyma was the greatest and most famous island, the
pole of ferocity of that amazing country of Gulag which, though
scattered in an Archipelago geographically, was, in the psycho-
logical sense, fused into a continent — an almost invisible, almost
imperceptible country inhabited by the zek people.

And this Archipelago crisscrossed and patterned that other
country within which it was located, like a gigantic patchwork,
cutting into its cities, hovering over its streets. Yet there were
many who did not even guess at its presence and many, many
others who had heard something vague. And only those who had
been there knew the whole truth.