Let's get it out of the way, first thing. Washington DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" for a reason, which makes Tulsi Gabbard stand out for her dynamite good looks alone.
Beautiful Tulsi.
Dynamite good looks, charisma out to there, and she's even a surfer. From Hawaii. A total babe. She could be a movie star, something dreamed up by Hollywood.
In fact, keep that idea in mind for later.
Add to that a war veteran backstory, eloquence, obvious brilliance and impeccable instincts, and you have all the makings of a political star - the first Madam President, perhaps. Once considered "the female Obama" of the Democrats, over the last several years she has been involved in multiple high profile conflicts within her own party and eventually declared herself an independent.
To the shock and horror of the entire Democratic party establishment, she even began appearing as Tucker Carlson's back up host on FOX News. At first blush this pairing seems highly unusual, although with a certain perspective is easily explained.
Keep that in mind as well.
Gabbard has increasingly positioned herself as a "populist" who appeals to both the left and the right. She's even managed to be seen both as "anti-war" and "strong on defense" depending on who is looking.
There are a few different narratives about Tulsi. For some progressives, she's anti-war with veteran credibility, a by-the-numbers social progressive, and bravely stood up to the Democratic National Committee when they used underhanded tactics against Bernie Sanders. For some on the right, she's practically a hawk, tough on terrorism and not intimidated by political correctness to avoid using terms like "Islamic terrorism."
For her opponents, she is everything from a Hindu nationalist stooge of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right extremist BJP party, to an "Assad toadie" - that was Bari Weiss - to, as Hillary Clinton claimed, an asset of Vladimir Putin groomed to run as a third party candidate.
But all of those narratives, both pro-Tulsi and anti-Tulsi, miss the most interesting part - the central feature - of the Tulsi Gabbard story. Her fans simply interpret everything about her in the best possible light and her opponents simply interpret everything about her in the worst possible light.
Fundamentally, too, Tulsi's various "political stances" are not really that relevant to her story. Her position on this or that hot button social issue, this or that tax proposal, even somewhat her various foreign policy positions, are not nearly as interesting as the woman herself.
The intent here is neither to endorse, nor reject, Tulsi Gabbard as a political candidate, nor to advocate for or against any political party or ideology.
Instead, by examining Tulsi Gabbard's life and career, especially some of the most seemingly unusual aspects, we can observe an absolutely astonishing historical phenomenon, and get an amazing insight into the workings of the power structure of society, the nature of which is often described as "empire," and in recent years, based on various analyses of Türkiye, the NATO member formerly known as “Turkey,” sometimes called “the Deep State.”
The intent also is not to "prove" anything in a court of law. The intent is merely to point out the historical record and make some very obvious connections that are typically unnoticed.
All of the information can be found in uncontroversial sources such as Wikipedia, Wikipedia footnotes, and a collection of almost entirely "mainstream" publications, easily accessible online. The reader is urged to verify any claims by referencing the source materials. One hopes the implications - and conclusions - become apparent even without explication.
Unintuitively, the best place to start is by considering a 1974 book titled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by "Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John D. Marks, a former officer of the United States Department of State." Wikipedia quotes Marchetti:
There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult -- the cult of intelligence. Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government. Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence -- the academic world and the communications media. The cult of intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy. The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader. Today, however, that dream stands tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available.
Wikipedia then quotes former CIA director William Colby, perhaps most famous for his midnight canoe rides in the Potomac river, endorsing Marchetti's thesis:
Socially as well as professionally they cliqued together, forming a sealed fraternity. They ate together at their own special favorite restaurants; they partied almost only among themselves; their families drifted to each other, so their defenses did not always have to be up. In this way they increasingly separated themselves from the ordinary world and developed a rather skewed view of that world. Their own dedicated double life became the proper norm, and they looked down on the life of the rest of the citizenry. And out of this grew what was later named -- and condemned -- as the "cult" of intelligence, an inbred, distorted, elitist view of intelligence that held it to be above the normal processes of society, with its own rationale and justification, beyond the restraints of the Constitution, which applied to everything and everyone else.
This view of the Central Intelligence Agency as a "cult" or "cult-like" may be to various degrees accurate or not. However, the description of CIA as a "cult" has an astonishing resonance with other contemporary phenomena, most specifically, the post-World War II era rise of various "cults" leading eventually to a backlash - the so-called "anti-cult" movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In another confluence, the timing of the backlash against "cults" coincided with the backlash against the Central Intelligence Agency, leading to the infamous Church and Rockefeller Committees.
The headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency is named "The George H. W. Bush Center For Intelligence." Former President Bush is considered by many the greatest CIA director and is widely credited with "saving the agency."
"Saving the agency" from what is a good question to ask. As is, why did the agency need saving? Or even, how did Director Bush save CIA?
Keeping this idea, of CIA as a "cult," as context, let's begin at the beginning of Tulsi Gabbard herself. April 12, 1981, to be precise, Tulsi Gabbard was born.
Beautiful Tulsi's birthplace was, fittingly, itself beautiful. Tutuila, the largest island in American Samoa, a literal Tropical Island Paradise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Even a Wikipedia level review provides enough context: American Samoa is more or less a colony of the United States military. Nearly half of Samoan men join the US military and for years Samoa has enlisted more soldiers per capita than any other US territory or state. For generations of Samoans, US military service was their ticket "off the rock" and their only chance to see the world.
Tulsi Gabbard's father, Mike Gabbard, also born in American Samoa, would seem the perfect candidate for the US military, and a glance at his extensive world wide travels would seem to back that up. But there doesn't seem to be any record of Mike Gabbard serving in the military in any capacity. His career begins at the American Samoa Community College, "American Samoa's only tertiary education institution," where he served as dean from the 1970s to the early 1980s. He then ran a school in Hawaii and he and his wife for a time ran a vegetarian health food restaurant.
It was this time period that would prove controversial later in Tulsi's career. Mike Gabbard became well known as an "opponent of LGBT rights" and led the successful campaign for Hawaiian Constitutional Amendment 2, based on Bill Clinton's recently passed Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between one man and one woman, which passed with nearly 70% of the popular vote.
For the Democratic party of the 1990s, that was the official, mainstream position. But for the Democratic party thirty years later, beyond the pale. As a young teenager, Tulsi Gabbard even appeared with her entire family in a commercial for the amendment. At some point in her long political career Tulsi realigned herself with the changing party line but this history was of course used to attack her during her Presidential campaign in 2020.
In 2004, Mike Gabbard was a city councilman running for a seat in Congress, and his opposition, in an attempt to discredit him in the eyes of conservative Christians allied with him on the marriage issue, highlighted an unusual affiliation of the senior Gabbard.
It is here you can first see a hint of a most amazing historical phenomenon. It seems clear that Mike Gabbard's opposition didn't really understand what they were seeing in 2004, just as in 2020 journalists intent on discrediting Tulsi Gabbard in the eyes of progressive Democrats didn’t understand what they were seeing. All they could see, all they were interested in seeing, was "homophobia," thus missed the most amazing - the most important - part of the story.
Next time, we’ll look into this unusual affiliation and discern its actual significance.