This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it. - R. A. Lafferty

What about Cathead?” Thomas asked the precis machine.
“Cathead is the cancer that is being excised from this world. It is the cancer because the inhabitants of Cathead regard themselves as individuals and believe in the importance of themselves. Yes, Cathead is quite large, the largest of the cities, larger even than Cosmopolis the capital. We will leave Cathead out of account here since it is not typical of Astrobe.

And the people had begun to gather, tame people with a new wild look about them. Like wolves they were, and they snuffed and howled. Panlykonium reigned in Centrality Square, .and the air sparked with danger.

And at almost the identical time two men were murdered. One of them was a Great Liberal Statesman who was actually a shoddy phony, and one was a Well-Beloved Conservative Leader whose own family couldn't stand him. There was a further distortion. The reports of both murders were out slightly before they happened, and partisans of both men had begun to gather.
And just previous to the riots, an army detachment had crossed over from Virginia to put down the riots. The military could not find the reported corpses strewing the sidewalks. Wisely they waited. They were only a little bit early.
In other sections, students attacked soldiers. The students always averaged about ten years older than the soldiers.