05-21-2020, 07:56 PM
(05-20-2020, 10:21 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I find it amusing that the boomers here seem to be clueless as to what I mean by mining salt.
Ah, yes -- the salt mines. Until modern times, most miners were slaves. Mining then as now was unpleasant, dangerous, often life-shortening work.
Consider that South Africa largely used "Bantu" workers to mine diamonds -- and that thug insurgencies in parts of Africa use captives to mine "b;lood diamonds". Consider that Commie regimes often used political prisoners to mine uranium. Coal miners in Japanese-occupied Manchuria were slaves for all practical purposes.
Although salt isn't a particularly dangerous substance unless in solution... OK... a salt mine was a terrible place if one was thirsty, and salt as dust was everywhere. Salt mines used to be one place for consigning political and religious offenders. The royal salt mines -- profits for the King, death for the workers.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.