Who Represented Hawaii In Congress, Tulsi Gabbard Or Her Weird Toenail-Eating Cult?
As if we didn't need another reason to celebrate her leaving.
About halfway through the big new Washington Post deep dive into Tulsi Gabbard’s tangled relationship with the cult to which she has allegedly belonged since childhood, we found ourselves pondering this question: Does Tulsi Gabbard exist?
No, your Wonkette has not been taking an Introduction to Philosophy class at the Learning Annex. Nor have we been smoking any of that dank weed Donald Sutherland was holding in Animal House. What we mean is, would Tulsi Gabbard do or believe anything if she did not have her cult there to tell her what to do or believe? Would she be a sentient and independent-minded creature in the Cartesian sense of “I think, therefore I am”? Or would she simply have never been?
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We don’t know. What we do know, based on the story, is that Gabbard reportedly had nearly constant guidance from the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), the breakaway Hare Krishna sect to which she has long been connected. (We’ve written about SIF in depth before.) And when we say guidance, we mean the sect/cult leader reportedly told her what policies to embrace, what legislation to introduce when she was in the House of Representatives, what to say in media appearances and speeches, and how to act on camera.
Of course, lots of elected officials have image consultants and handlers and advisers without whom they might be lost all day. But in Gabbard’s case, the flurry of orders was so all-encompassing that it is hard to see her as anything other than an empty vessel serving her mysterious and reclusive guru’s wishes. It was as if the Tulsi Gabbard we all saw yammering about the aloha spirit and America’s misunderstanding of the humanity of Bashar al-Assad was basically just Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (try saying that ten times fast, or even one time fast), in a Tulsi Gabbard skinsuit.
Spokespeople for Gabbard and for SIF deny it, but one of the big questions raised by the story is whether Butler is for sure the one behind all these memos and all this advice. The whistleblower who provided this trove of memos to Jon Swaine of the Post says duh, yes:
But the main speaker in each memo — the person who appeared to be issuing directives and sometimes castigating Gabbard — wasn’t named. There was simply no attribution or mention of who they were.
When I asked [whistleblower Rebecca] Saltzburg about this, she seemed amused. It was Butler, of course, she said. No one else could speak to Gabbard like that, she added. Saltzburg said the memos were unattributed precisely to mask Butler’s identity if they ever became public.
Whether it was Butler or one of his minions, the memos could be harsh. Swaine quotes one memo telling Gabbard “nobody gives a shit” about her opinions of a Barack Obama State of the Union speech. The memo goes on to sneer that “You’re not even trying. You’ve become really intellectually lazy.” Another memo calls her “chickenshit” and “mealymouthed” about a policy proposal.
If you have read about the psychology of cults, you know that one method leaders use to ensure loyalty from members is to destroy an individual’s self-esteem. This makes that person more desperate for and dependent on the cult leader’s approval. The disparagement continues forever, and the person is forced to prove her loyalty over and over.
This is also why commentators often dismiss Donald Trump’s fans and enablers as cultists of a sort. How often have we seen his staffers debase themselves for the sentient tube of bronzer, smiling as he insults them in the most personal and crude terms. The difference is, those people are on his payroll. Butler, as far as anyone can tell, isn’t on Gabbard’s. If anything, it seems like it’s the other way around.
Swaine has several examples of times when Gabbard received instructions on which policies to back from Butler and SIF, what talking points to use in media appearances, and what bills to introduce in Congress. But when he asked anyone in Gabbard’s orbit about any of this, the answers when he got them were mostly of the The Washington Post hates Hindus variety:
A vice president at a Manhattan-based public relations firm also contacted me on SIF’s behalf ... [H]e provided me with a statement: “Hinduphobia, anti-Hindu religious bigotry, that’s all this is,” the statement said. “When a Hindu public figure has a spiritual teacher or shares views with a Hindu religious figure, that alone is somehow evidence of sinister control.”
The “sharing views” with her alleged guru isn’t the issue. It’s the “this weirdo guru whose followers reportedly eat his toenails seems to control every part of her life from what she says on TV to what policies she pursues in office” that’s the issue.
You know who else of all damn people is accusing the media of “anti-Hindu bias” in talking about Tulsi Gabbard? Meghan McCain, who is a Gabbard friend and also the daughter of John McCain, in case you hadn’t heard her mention that before:
What’s this about Gabbard’s release on Dr. Anthony Fauci?
Oh well, her last day as DNI this past Thursday, Gabbard released a whole tranche of documents rehashing the old conspiracist claims that Fauci fund gain-of-function research at the same lab in Wuhan that some people think the COVID virus leaked out of, and Fauci wouldn’t admit he kicked off the whole thing and the intelligence community covered it all up while Americans died and everyone had to stay home and Bethany Mandel’s kids cruelly had to wear masks every time they entered a Harris Teeter:
If you watch the video — and why would you — you’ll see that this is the same usual mash-up of conspiracist thinking and baseless smearing of Fauci that we have been hearing for six years now. We propose that the media paid no attention to it for the following reasons:
It’s bullshit.
It’s bullshit that has been debunked about a gazillion times, including by congressional committees, and the only people who still buy it are cranks and idiots.
There is a lot else going on — war with Iran, the World Cup, Donald Trump turning the Reflecting Pool into a fetid, algae-ridden, duck-killing swamp. Our media is pretty busy!
It’s bullshit.
The people who still buy this stuff are, unfortunately, in charge of our government right now. Like this asshole:
Gabbard has supposedly been on the outs with Trump and much of the administration for quite some time over her position on the Iran War (she’s opposed) and her inability to prove that George Soros and his secret antifa army committed voter fraud on a massive scale to steal the 2020 election from Herr Trump. Could this video be one last desperate grasp for Trump’s approval on Gabbard’s way out the door? Maybe! But based on everything else we’ve talked about, we can’t say whose approval is most important to her.
In any case, Gabbard is out of government. We wish her a (hopefully) permanent retirement surfing and yammering about aloha and snacking on her leader’s toenails if she finds ‘em tasty (allegedly!) and whatever else she wants to do that will never, ever again bring her to our attention.
OPEN THREAD.
We’ll call Wonkette a cult if it means you give us all your money.
I got very excited by my purchase of sheet straps that hold the corners down.
Once you get a cushion top mattress then add a foam mattress pad even the deep pocket sheets don't stay on and I am toss and turn kind of sleeper. I also am like the princess and the pea and feel every wrinkle.
Well I put these on and it looks pretty good, fingers crossed it actually works.
OH MY GOD I am becoming an old person.
Monday Bear showing off his mittens. He even had floof between his toes!
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