It's fascinating in one sense how the seemingly ultra-modern (the Petrostate) leads to the recreation of medieval social patterns. I suppose in one sense it's the consequence of a political system that in many ways would otherwise be anachronistic (absolute monarchy and its associated social structure/cultural patterns) superimposed on modern technology that permits the maintenance of a very old type of regime with far greater efficiency than the original brand of autocracies managed to make it work. It's equally shameful how modern societies with much greater access to information than their precursors know of what's happening, why it's happening, and how much people suffer and then do nothing at all to affect it one way or the other.