It defines Dwight as exactly what he is: a hypocrite who thinks he’s a hero. Rainn Wilson has described the character he played as “someone who does not hate the system, but has a deep and abiding love for it.” One of The Office’s ongoing jokes, though, is the hollowness of his devotion. “That is the law according to the rules,” Dwight says at one point. He does not stop to consider why “the rules” exist, or whom they serve. Dwight embodies the philosopher Kate Manne’s observations about white male entitlement: When you assume yourself to be naturally entitled to deference or forgiveness or love, the assumption self-rationalizes. Entitlement, too, is tautological.

It is also profoundly consequential. Dwight predicted a world, the writer Sarah Rosenthal observes, that is “defined by anxious men, desperate to feel powerful the way they might have in a bygone era, while insensitive to the humanity of others.” And he anticipated a political condition in which hypocrisy would be so widespread—and so absurdly brazen—as to be atmospheric. Dwight is, in his contours, Mitch McConnell. He is Brian Kemp. He is Donald Trump. He is someone who imposes his will on everyone else and then says, when they object, That is the law according to the rules.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237017)

So, um, just let EVERYONE "assume themselves" entitled...and, shazam!, everyone IS! It's "tautological"!

Problem solved? Can the snowflakes change their maxipads and stop whining already?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237054)

mgarber@theatlantic.com

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237073)

In the center - yeah, she clogs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237226)

It's like when Batman already solves the problem before you even have to put up the Batsignal.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41240420)

They really, really hate us.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41239390)

Don't agree? Guess you would be ok with Hitler?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237082)

In many early episodes of the show, Dwight’s destructive tendencies are treated as gentle jokes. He brings weapons into the office; Pam laughs about him being a “gun nut.” When he brags about his ability to “physically dominate” other people—or when he remarks offhandedly, “Better a thousand innocent men are locked up than one guilty man roam free”—the message is less that he is a menace than that he is a fool. Dwight comes to work on Halloween dressed variously as the Joker from The Dark Knight, a Sith lord, and the local criminal known as the “Scranton Strangler”; the costumes read primarily as pitiable. The sanitized threats are elements of the sitcom’s promise: No matter what might happen on the show, viewers can safely file it away as Fun. This is also part of the alchemy through which Dwight Schrute—a misogynist in the age of Elliot Rodger, a conspiracist in the age of QAnon, a vigilante in the age of Kyle Rittenhouse—can read, still, as a joke.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237138)

this reminds me of being a freshman in high school in english class where the teacher would ask the students to write about the "deeper meaning" of some writing, and when you'd read the papers of other students it was just completely made up nonsense that had absolutely nothing to do with what, if anything, the author was trying to say

god damn i cannot fucking stress enough just how much of a mistake it was to bestow literacy on the general population and to allow women to openly and publicly express their thoughts

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237190)

Are there any decent journalists anymore?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237201)

Robert Manne was born in Melbourne to parents who were Jewish refugees from Europe. His earliest political consciousness was shaped by this fact and that both sets of grandparents were victims of the Holocaust. He was educated at the University of Melbourne (1966–69) (BA) (Honours thesis 1969, "George Orwell: Socialist Pamphleteer") and the University of Oxford (BPhil). He joined La Trobe University in Melbourne in its early years. He served there as a professor in politics and culture until retirement in 2012. He is Vice-Chancellor's Fellow and Convenor of the Ideas & Society Program at La Trobe.

He is married to journalist and social philosopher Anne Manne.[1] Their daughter, Kate Manne, is a philosopher and an assistant professor at Cornell University. She writes on ethics and feminism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4668895&forum_id=2#41237237)