Am I my husband's keeper?

According to woke-ism, yes. Woke-ism demands strict adherence to its ever-changing principles. Family members must also adhere. This is what makes it a cult.

My husband, Daniel, used to be an asset for me at work. He’s fun, he can hobnob with anyone, and he can talk knowledgeably about pretty much anything.

As part of my job as the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) of Levi’s, I had to go to a lot of San Francisco 49ers games at Levi’s Stadium and fancy events at all sorts of places. Sometimes I’d have to sit with 49ers management. Or even players.

I hate football. Daniel took over in those instances. He and Ronnie Lott (pictured above) really hit it off.

I know pretty much all men can talk about football. But he can also talk about business, politics, world affairs, history, literature, music. You name it, he can talk about it. With anyone.

Daniel was a great person to have tag along to work events with lots of strangers where my natural lean towards introversion would always kick-in.

But starting in Covid times my husband was no longer an asset. Everyone at work hated him.

He was and is relentless about the cruelty of lockdown policies, including vaccine mandates. He is unforgiving towards those who furthered the belief that any of this was necessary when in fact, it’s been disastrously harmful.

He spared no one in his criticism on social media. He is a stay-at-home dad. He had no reason to be careful, no employer to mind.

Why people seem to accept that if you do have a job, you can’t say what you think is beyond me. Like you’re not an actual person anymore, you’re a mouthpiece for a company, with no rights as an everyday citizen?

But now, it is just accepted that you can’t say what you think if you work for whatever company. And neither can your spouse.

In this post-feminist age, do I not have a voice and thoughts discreet from my husband’s? Am I owned, brainwashed and programmed by him? According to Levi’s employees, it seems so.

“Woke-ism” demands that you not only adhere to its principles, but your family members do as well. It is cult-like. In fact, one of the seven signs you’re in a cult is the cult asks you to renounce family members and cut off contact with non-believers.

Who would do this? Apparently 3-4 million Scientologists in the US would.

Scientology has furthered a policy of “disconnection” for many years. Disconnection is a core principle of this “faith” and encourages the severing of all ties with anyone, including and especially family members who are “antagonistic” towards Scientology. In this “religion” those antagonistic towards Scientology are called “suppressive persons” and stand in the way of an acolyte’s spiritual growth. Suppressive persons must be shunned for the Scientology member to move to the next stage of their development.  

How is this different from demanding a person denounce a family member or lose their job? Or denounce them, then lose it anyway?

In June 2020, Aleksandar Katai was released from his contract with the professional soccer team, The Los Angeles Galaxy. He was not released due to poor performance or even something he’d done or said. He was fired because of things his wife Tea had said on social media.

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, Tea took to Instagram. She captioned a photo of a looter hauling off boxes of Nikes with “Black Nikes Matter.” Insensitive? Sure. Should he have been fired for it? No.

His soccer was on point. That’s the job. How is what his wife says relevant to the job at hand?

Beyond all that, the couple is Serbian. One might consider that the ways of Americans were unfamiliar to them. They’d just moved to America a few months earlier, in January, when he joined the team. One could also argue that, while Katai left Serbia to play soccer in America, they had both grown up in an economically unstable nation only recently emerging from war and global sanctions. Perhaps it’s not that weird if he and his wife had not yet made the racial conflicts in our country a focus of their psychic recovery.

Katai disavowed his wife, calling her comments “a mistake from my family.” He apologized “for the pain these posts have caused the LA Galaxy family and all allies in the fight against racism.”

He didn’t understand that apologies prompt no forgiveness. They are a ritual of self-flagellation. Their only role is to prostrate the sinner.

Unsurprisingly, the apology didn’t work. The day after her post, a few fans protested at the Galaxy stadium with a banner that said, “No racists in our club.” Katai was fired the next day.

In the spring and summer of 2021, as vaccine mandates were implemented, my husband was very vocal about the discriminatory nature of this policy. He said things like this:

Vaccine passports discriminate against the unvaccinated.

In addition, their impact has been racially discriminatory as Black and brown Americans were least likely to be vaccinated in 2021 and still are today. Banning the unvaccinated from public spaces amounted to banning a disproportionate number of Black and brown people from public spaces.

Here are the vaccination rates by race/ethnicity for all age groups in LA County, as of August 22, 2022.

When vaccines for kids 12 and up became available in 2021, Black families were least likely to vaccinate their children and still are today.

As school districts threatened to bar unvaccinated students from attending school, Black and Latino children were most at risk of being forced out of the public education system. In December 2021, the Los Angeles County school district (LAUSD) walked back its requirement for students 12 and up to be vaccinated by January 2022 because it would have resulted in banning 30,000 students from campuses in the district, impacting mostly non-white students.

Daniel was right. Vaccine mandates are discriminatory. LAUSD ultimately decided not to impose them for that very reason, even if they didn’t admit that was why.

The truth of this didn’t stop employees at Levi’s from going after me because of things my husband said. The truth doesn’t matter. Blind faith in science and all-knowing public health authorities matters. Anything less is heresy and must be punished.

In spring of 2021, I was pressured into doing an “apology tour” to repent for my Covid sins. And my husband’s.

I did not repent. I’d learned from Katai that there is no forgiveness when you bend a knee. If you aren’t sorry, don’t apologize. If you are, by all means, you should. I wasn’t. So, I didn’t. It was more of an “explanation tour” in the end.

One of the two questions asked in the virtual “town hall” was about Daniel.  

I don’t recall another time in my close to 23 years at Levi’s that anyone had to answer any questions about a spouse let alone apologize for something the spouse had done or said.

“What do you have to say about the racist, anti-science, anti-vaxx things your husband says on Twitter? Do you agree with him? He compares barring the unvaccinated from public life to racism and that diminishes the discrimination of real racism. It’s not a choice to be Black. It’s a choice not to be vaccinated.”

What they were really saying: we think you agree with him, and you are a racist, anti-vaxxer too. Even if you don’t, you’re with him, so you support the view. Do this walk of shame. And take the humiliation as we wish to dish it out. And as you deserve.

I knew this question was coming and I answered honestly. I tried to diffuse things, keep it diplomatic while being truthful. And possibly keep my job, though the odds of that were looking slimmer by the day.  

The long and short of what I said was: married couples don’t agree on everything, I am not responsible for what he says, I support his right to say what he believes as I support all of yours, and he doesn’t work for the company.

What I didn’t say overtly was that I agreed with him on this point, even though I’d say it differently. (Because I’m not him!)

Why didn’t I say this? Because IT’S NOT THE POINT. HE CAN SAY WHATEVER HE WANTS. (Well Twitter doesn’t think so. More on that in another post.)

I spoke the truth. I didn’t apologize. Not for him. Not for me. I did nothing wrong. And neither did he.

You can disagree or agree with Daniel. I’m not here to argue the merits.

But here’s the thing: I was forced to answer questions about his views in my “apology tour”. I was scolded repeatedly for things he had said or tweeted. He was vocal about being unvaccinated himself and so I was also asked to answer the question: Are you vaccinated?

Last I checked Levi’s had a vaccine mandate for on-site and remote employees. But not spouses.

Do we really think a family member’s words should be a Human Resources violation? What if Daniel voted for a Republican and said so on social media? What if he joined the NRA? Do these things mean I can’t have a job at Levi’s or any similarly left leaning company?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. At least according to the woke mob.

This generation of woke, omnipotent moral busybodies will police your words and your family members’, and once they have decided you need to go, that you are too toxic, they will banish you for your misdeeds with religious fervor, eager to prove that they are indeed a certain kind of person, devout and superior in their seriousness.

Covid provided this opportunity for so many. While the young and healthy were never at any serious risk, these moralizing tribalists, adopted Covid-fear and the need to reorganize our entire lives around it as the ultimate proof of their goodness. Caution was noble, extreme caution was saintly.

They were (are?) willing to mask outside on a bicycle, never shake hands again, boost indefinitely every 60 days forever and anon, and sacrifice children at the altar of Covid-fear.

My husband and I were not. My views about kids needing to get back to school were bad enough. But they were tepid compared to his views on the magical vaccines to which we all were required to pledge our divine faith.

He was an apostate.

His views and words were criminal and I aided and abetted his crimes, according to the employees at Levi’s.

Amidst all of this strife at work with employees calling me racist and anti-everyone, I was told in October of 2021, that I was a candidate for CEO.

I was told a background check was necessary. Not just for me, but my husband as well. It would include an investigation to ensure there were no untoward financial entanglements, no arrests or crimes on my record. And a social media scan for both me and my husband.

The whole thing was a set-up.  I agreed to it. But I knew it was the end.

The background check’s findings, no matter what they were, would be twisted to ensure I was not only expelled but branded forever as a Covid denier and heretic.  No way anything was coming back other than – you have to go. EVEN IF my stuff was fine, Daniel’s would be used as reason enough for dismissal.

In the age of woke-ism, the sins of the husbands are to be laid upon the wives. And vice versa. We are not individuals with our own thoughts. In fact, independent thinking is discouraged and punished.

For all the woke-sters’ claims to a modern, egalitarian and open-minded sensibility, they are retrograde and narrow-minded. They revel in the smug approval of their in-group and their own unexamined consciences.

And they do so without ever exercising their minds with any moral effort or their hearts with any moral courage.

It seems everyone hates the idea of a witch hunt. Until they spy a witch in the workplace. Or her husband on Twitter.