More on ’89 USAFA grad with a sterling woke pedigree:
By Stella Morabito | The Federalist
Every American should be rooting for the plaintiffs suing United Airlines for violating the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. About 2,000 employees were supposedly granted religious or medical accommodations to excuse them from taking the Covid vaccine (out of about 5,000 requests). But those “accommodations” came with harsh, discriminatory punishments.
United CEO Scott Kirby displayed a hostile attitude toward any employee who did not comply with his orders to get the Covid vaccine.
By September 2021, all “reasonably accommodated” pilots, flight attendants, and “customer-facing” employees who declined the injection were stripped of their pay and their medical insurance.
The process of discovery also revealed that other employees who hesitated to take the jabs were subjected to a deliberate campaign of workplace humiliation — under the guise of safety — in which they were required to undergo “purposely putative” masking and testing.
There’s a lot at stake in the outcome of this lawsuit. Especially critical is the plaintiffs’ motion last month to certify the case as a class action.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in February 2022 that the plaintiffs suffered “irreparable harm” from United Airlines’ policy of unpaid leave, its threats, and its coercive practices. But only if the suit proceeds as a class action can United truly be held accountable for the great harm it’s done to so many of its employees.
Federal District Judge Mark Pittman will probably rule on that motion within the next couple of months.
Kirby apparently used every dirty trick in the book to pressure every single one of United’s 60,000 employees to submit to the injections and other Covid-related mandates.
Tactics included mockery, threats, harassment on the job, pressure on family members, and literal financial ruin.
He even warned that anyone considering an exemption — whether because of a sincere religious objection or because of an authenticated medical need certified by a physician — should “be very careful” because “you’re putting your job on the line.”
There are at least three key takeaways from the situation at United.
First, it illustrates that the injured must always seek out one another and speak in solidarity to hold accountable those who do harm.
Second, toxic bosses like Kirby will always use the tired excuse of “safety” or “for your own good” as a means of imposing control.
Third, power elites like Kirby seem only interested in what their circle of elites thinks of them.
They don’t care what the public thinks because they have the propaganda media running cover for them while they use people as pawns in their games of one-upmanship with their competitors.
Solidarity Always Overcomes Isolation
If it had not been for two United pilots and an attorney who co-founded Airline Employees for Heath Freedom (AE4HF) most of the injured employees probably would have remained silent. A United pilot told me this group’s outspokenness against the mandates clarified that he was not alone in his concerns.
I’ve often noted this point in my essays and my book, The Weaponization of Loneliness. People are more easily controlled when they’re socially isolated.
But when grievances are openly shared, the injured become more emboldened. That’s why tyrants always seek first to socially isolate their targets through demonization campaigns.
After United Captain Sherry Walker and her fellow pilot, Captain Laura Cox, along with attorney Danielle Runyan co-founded AE4HF, more aggrieved employees came out of the shadows.
At a rally against the mandates last year, Walker passionately declared that Kirby “decided to play God” and “destroyed our lives for his marketing campaign.”
Kirby’s Mandates Were Never About Safety
Safety? Please. Don’t talk about safety in the same breath as this so-called vaccine.
Kirby was likely hoping to gain bragging rights over the entire airline industry.
He was pushing hard for 100 percent Covid-vaccinated employees, far beyond what’s required for herd immunity. Obviously, 100 percent is an unattainable goal for such a huge labor force of actual individual human beings.
First, if you believe they are human, you don’t make it impossible for employees to apply for reasonable accommodations.
A United pilot told me, “They gave us undoable tasks and timelines.” He said that on the Friday before Labor Day in 2021, United allowed applications but required receipt by Labor Day, along with documentation from the applicant’s religious leader or doctor.
Second, you don’t harass and demonize them. The process of discovery uncovered numerous cases of coercive practices through psychological and social pressures by United.
For example, those requesting a religious accommodation were sent a list of weird and deceptive questions insinuating that refusal to vaccinate meant not loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
Another divide-and-conquer tactic presumably endorsed by Kirby was to send postcards to the homes of the unvaccinated employees, in red print warning that not getting the shot would result in termination from the company. The intention was evidently to alert family members so that the employee could be further pressured at home.
‘It’s Too Bad He’s a Jerk’
One United pilot who survived the toxicity told me that he had once viewed Kirby as an exceptionally talented CEO who was very smart and effective: “He made United a lot of money. It’s too bad he’s a jerk.”
Indeed. Despite the mediocrity that is corrupting all institutions today, there are still many elites with high levels of talent.
So why is it increasingly uncommon to find any with compassion and a sense of honor?
Most decent people assume that even high-level elites would care if the general public thought of them as low-life jerks who prey on others to feed their egos.
No, these guys care primarily about what other elites think of them. Being the first in the industry with the vaccine mandate got Kirby something he seemed to care far more about: a special pat on the back from President Joe Biden.
Likewise, it’s doubtful he cared when a video of him as a twerking drag queen went viral.
Hence, it makes sense that while Kirby’s barbaric injection mandate is stalled, he’s shifted his focus to another elitist pissing contest: making United Airlines the “first in the industry” to hire 50 percent of pilots on the basis of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).
See how this works? It’s about using the woke to impress fellow elites who must follow in his woke footsteps, thus promoting his status in his circle.
Kirby can also use DEI the way he used the Covid mandates: to divide and conquer his workforce.
So much for team spirit. Most people instinctively know that DEI drives a wedge between people who feel passed over despite their qualifications and people who feel they got special treatment with no regard for their qualifications.
Any Ruling for United Is a Ruling for Tyranny
United’s Covid mandates are still in place, though not enforced because of the lawsuit.
A final ruling for United Airlines would amount to judicial endorsement of all abuses of power for which its CEO pushed so hard. It would give all corporations and all such CEOs the green light to abuse their employees in the same way United abused theirs.
Most alarming was United’s invasion of the homes of its unvaccinated employees with postcards sent to stoke tensions at home. It’s a creepy practice, a dangerous step toward making private life a very public matter.
So any ruling in United’s favor — particularly on the recent motion to certify the injured as a class — would give a green light for all large corporations to abuse employees and invade their privacy.
Anything less than total vindication for the plaintiffs would be a serious blow to freedom of conscience and personal sovereignty.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.
First published on The Federalist
Book description:
The Weaponization of Loneliness offers the first deep dive into how power elites weaponize the fear of loneliness to enforce social conformity and wage war on the private sphere of life.
Do you keep your opinions to yourself because you’re afraid people will reject you? Do you sign on to a cause just because everyone around you acts like it’s the right thing to do?
Welcome to The Weaponization of Loneliness. Tyrants of all stripes want to tell you what to believe and how to live your life. They get away with it by using the most potent weapon at their disposal: your fear of ostracism.
This book explains how dictators—from the French Revolution to the Communist Party of China to today’s globalists—aim to atomize us in order to control us.
We fall for it because our need to connect with others and our fear of social rejection are so hardwired that they trigger our conformity impulse. These dynamics can even cause us to comply with evil orders.
We all need a better understanding of how the merchants of loneliness—power elites in Big Tech, Big Media, Big Government, academia, Hollywood, and the corporate world— exploit our terror of social isolation.
Their divide-and-conquer tactics include identity politics, political correctness, and mob agitation.
Their media monopoly spawns the propaganda essential to demonization campaigns, censorship, cancel culture, snitch culture, struggle sessions, the criminalization of comedy, and the subversion of society’s most fundamental institutions.
It all adds up to a machinery of loneliness. Ironically, people tend to comply with this machinery to avoid loneliness, but such compliance only isolates us further.
The Weaponization of Loneliness offers a message of hope. We can resist this psychological warfare if we have strong bonds in our families, faith communities, and friendships. Let’s resolve to talk to one another openly and often, especially about the consequences of giving in to social pressures and media hype.
Indeed, totalitarians always seek to destroy private life because it is the very fount of freedom.
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Kirby’s goal of making United “the first to hire 50% of pilots based on diversity, equity and inclusion” is a direct insult to all United pilots, past and present who were hired for their qualifications,to begin with, and their professionalism and dedication to this once great company.
When future customers are sitting in boarding areas and see the crew arrive, what might they be wondering if they see a Black, Hispanic, Asian or Arab in a pilot’s uniform. Might they wonder if they were fully qualified, or, one of Kirby’s “50%ers”?
On September 11, 2001, United Flight 93’s F/O was LeRoy Homer, USAFA ’87. Prior to joining the UAL family, F/O Homer was MAJ Homer flying missions during the Gulf War and Somalia. During his Air Force career, he earned “Aircrew Instructor-of-the-Year” honors. Before he ended his active-duty tour, he was a C-141 instructor pilot.
He then joined UAL in 1995. I had almost 29 years with UAL at the time and no, DEI did not exist in our hiring practices.
Here was one highly-qualified black pilot trusted to do his job because of his education and experience. HEROISM can be added as an other of F/O Homer’s attributes, but DEI does not apply to that quality of one’s character. UA Capt Al Haynes and US Capt Ches Sullenberger would be two examples. Hopefully, F/O Homer was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart for his sacrifice on UA 93.
I am surprised and disappointed that Kirby has not been fired after his disgusting ‘drag queen’ video was exposed. UAL’s board of directors should take a long and hard look at how they want the history of this once sterling airline to be remembered as while the airline, and its loyal employees, was in their hands.
One final thought…Homer was a USAFA ’87 and Kirby was Class of ’85 so they may have known each other. DEI DISHONORS THE MEMORY of F/O LeRoy Homer, JR.
Ken Delfino
UAL Retiree (1969-2002)
USN (RET)