Popular Mechanics magazine has practical advice for vandals
In 1902, when Henry Haven Windsor founded Popular Mechanics, he dreamed of a magazine that would show "the way the world works," using plain language, with illustrations to help out. Its original tagline was "Written so you can understand it." Now, though, Popular Mechanics has a new goal: helping the Black Lives Matter and Antifa revolution by explaining how best to tear down the fabric of our institutions.
It's fun to browse through the Popular Mechanics archives, looking at what used to inspire the readership. In 1944, six months before D-Day, the magazine explained "How Japan Will Be Defeated" and "Photos without Film" (the secret was photographic enlarging paper). A decade later, in the 1954 edition, readers learned about "Three Rear-Engine Cars," "Aluminum as a New Craft Material," and "How Your Brakes Work." Fast-forward to 2012, and the magazine is telling its readers about "Reengineering the Human" (with bionic prosthetics) and explaining the Costa Concordia disaster.
For over one hundred years, Popular Mechanics stayed true to its mission, explaining the mechanical and scientific world to readers who want to know how things work and, maybe, try building things themselves. No longer. At its online site, Popular Mechanics' latest article is entitled "How to Topple a Statue Using Science: Bring that sucker down without anyone getting hurt." (The Search Engine Optimization title is more graphic: "How to Remove Racist Statue | Physics of Taking Down Statues.")
The article is explicit that its goal is to make it easier for people to tear down or otherwise destroy any public or private statuary that offends them:
It hasn't been a great past few weeks for statues.
From Bristol, England to Birmingham, Alabama, people all over the world have been grappling with the legacy of racism by tossing their grappling hooks around the heads of problematic monuments.
Should you happen to find yourself near a statue that you decide you no longer like, we asked scientists for the best, safest ways to bring it to the ground without anyone getting hurt — except, of course, for the inanimate racist who's been dead for a century anyway.
The article tells readers how to use physics to drag a statue off its pedestal or to use chemicals to melt or explode a statue's ankles, causing it to topple. Not only can you destroy history, but it's fun!
And here's a fun bonus: The liquid nitrogen will quickly turn to a gas and come shooting out of that hole you drilled, says Harrison, which will almost certainly cause a high-pitched squeal. "One could imagine it sounding something like the sound a confederate general would make if their feet were on fire."
There is no relationship between this recipe for revolutionary destruction and the magazine's older articles, all aimed at helping people understand how the world works. This is pure anarchy from a magazine staffed with woke college graduates.
And no, it's not guesswork that the author is a college grad disseminating the indoctrination he got along with his degrees. James Stout, who wrote the article, graduated from Oxford with a B.A. in history and politics, and from U.C. San Diego with a Ph.D. in philosophy and European history. He's currently a freelance writer and adjunct professor at San Diego's Community College District, indoctrinating other young minds in socialist anarchy.
The genius of late 20th- and early 21st-century leftism was that it didn't attack America head-on. Instead, slowly but steadily, it's been eroding our institutions from the inside out. The fruit of that slow march through the institutions is a Popular Mechanics article explaining how to destroy our world.