POWER

"Knowledge is power."  - Frances Bacon 

"Information is power."  - Dwight Schrute

"Power is power." - Dwight Schrute

When I was a little boy (age 11), my Uncle Grit, took me out back t the stand of maples by Schrood Creek.  He brought his binoculars (Zeiss Victory 8x42 T FL) and shook them tenderly out of their case.  He put his hand on my shoulder and the binocs to my little round eyes.  He then showed me, high up on a branch, a strange doll with a noose around it's neck, hanging from an upper branch.

"What is that, Uncle Grit?" I asked.

"That 'D-cup' (for that is what he called me), is a Harry S. Truman doll.  It was hung there in protest effigy by myself and seven of my brothers in 1948.  We we're huge 'Dewey' fans and felt that Truman was a traitor to the cause.  We hung it in a place where only us Schrutes knew of it, so we wouldn't get arrested or anything.  This is a Schrute secret.  And as you are now a man, I am letting you know."

I knew at that point that I had become a Schrute.  I had become a man.

Cut to: a nuclear explosion off the coast of Scotland. .... Just kidding.  Cut to 5 years later.

I am showing little Johnny Hecht around the property, he has entered the family through marriage (Cousin Helga and Hank Hecht who managed the ice rink).

I have a crossroads in front of me.  Two roads diverged in the yellow snow.  And I took the one less traveled on.

I told little Johnny about the Truman effigy.  Why: Why, do you ask?  Why did you betray your Uncle Grit by telling a non-Schrute about the doll?

Simple.  POWER

I told little Johnny about the doll and told him that he was now the recipient of privileged information that could get him killed or worse if it ever got out.  Johnny gasped and swore his allegiance to me for all time. Little Johnny was now mine.  I controlled him.  Like a pawn in my own private game of Schrute chess.  Like a golem form Yiddish lore.   That,  my friends and readers, is how one powerfully uses powe to gain power.

Leson learned? Don't "F" with a Shrute.

That is All.

Dwight K. Schrute

Post Script:  Where is Johnny now you ask?  Serving with honor in the Coast Guard off the coast of Naples, Florida.  The exact same Coast Guard featured in the hit movie "The Guardian" starring Ashton Kutcher.