The corporate media is having a collective meltdown over 25,000 pages of leaked memos. The narrative is as predictable as it is hysterical: Tulsi Gabbard, the recently resigned Director of National Intelligence, was supposedly a puppet operating under the remote control of a reclusive Hawaiian guru named Chris Butler. The mainstream press wants you to believe this is an unprecedented breach of American governance, a Manchurian Candidate scenario playing out in real time.
They are wrong. They are missing the entire point.
The obsession with Gabbard's religious ties is a lazy, sensationalist distraction from how modern political power actually operates. For decades, the media has treated spiritual advisors to politicians with a mix of exoticism and terror. Yet, the mechanics exposed in these 25,000 documents reveal nothing more than the standard operating procedure of Washington, dressed up in flowing robes instead of Brooks Brothers suits.
The Myth of the Independent Politician
Open any mainstream publication today and you will see the same thesis: a shadowy group dictated Gabbard’s legislative actions, media appearances, and voting record between 2011 and 2017. The underlying assumption here is hilarious. It presumes that other politicians are fiercely independent thinkers who write their own bills, formulate their own worldviews, and arrive at decisions through pure, unadulterated reason.
Let’s smash that illusion immediately.
I have spent years watching Washington operations from the inside. I have watched freshman congressmen walk into smoke-filled rooms and hand over their legislative voting cards to corporate lobbyists. Every single politician in Washington is managed. They are surrounded by an ecosystem of handlers, donors, think tanks, and special interest groups that draft their legislation and script their talking points word for word.
Imagine a scenario where a corporate senator receives a 200-page policy packet from a fossil fuel conglomerate, copies the text verbatim into a bill, and passes it into law. The media calls that "shrewd political alignment." But when Gabbard receives policy memos from associates of a fringe religious group, the media calls it "cult brainwashing."
The mechanism is identical. Only the branding is different.
The real discomfort with the Science of Identity Foundation is not that they managed a politician. The discomfort stems from the fact that they are outsiders to the traditional Washington beltway elite. They did not play by the established rules of corporate lobbying.
The Anatomy of the 25,000 Pages
Let’s look at the actual data within the leak rather than the breathless headlines. The memos outline directives on TV appearances, suggestions for specific foreign policy stances, and bills to introduce in the House.
When you strip away the sensationalized framing, what do these directives actually look like? They look like standard communications strategy packets. Any public relations firm charging $50,000 a month delivers the exact same product to their political clients. They tell the politician when to smile, which phrases to repeat, and which media outlets to avoid.
The media claims that Gabbard introduced a bill targeting foreign fighters in the Islamic State just days after an internal memo suggested it. They point to this as definitive proof of her servitude. In reality, it is proof of basic organizational efficiency. Political operations rely on strict messaging pipelines. Whether that pipeline originates at a K Street firm or a compound in Maui changes the aesthetic, not the systemic reality.
By hyper-focusing on the "guru" aspect, critics expose their own cultural and religious biases. Washington has always been comfortable with politicians seeking counsel from traditional religious figures. Nobody questioned the immense political influence of Billy Graham on multiple U.S. presidents. Nobody writes frantic exposés when a Catholic politician consults with church leadership on social policy. The panic only triggers when the advisor falls outside Western, institutionalized norms.
The Real Danger of the Distraction
The true failure of this coverage is that it sanitizes the rest of the political establishment. By painting Gabbard as an anomaly—a uniquely compromised figure controlled by an external entity—the media reinforces the false idea that everyone else in power is clean.
It creates a convenient scapegoat. It allows the public to vent their anger at a weird, fringe target while ignoring the massive, legalized corruption that dictates 99% of policy decisions in the United States.
The established network of think tanks—organizations funded by defense contractors, foreign governments, and multinational banks—wields vastly more control over American foreign policy than Chris Butler ever could. These institutions systematically manufacture consent for endless military interventions, trade agreements that hollow out the domestic working class, and financial regulations written by the banks themselves.
Yet, we rarely see front-page investigations detailing the 25,000 emails exchanged between a Senate committee chair and a military-industrial lobbyist. Those relationships are normalized. They are woven into the fabric of daily governance.
The Flaw in the Performance
To understand the full picture, we must look at the downsides of this outside-the-system management style. While the media's framing of a "mind-controlled puppet" is inaccurate, the leak does expose a fundamental flaw in Gabbard’s political architecture.
Relying on an insular, non-traditional group of advisors isolates a politician from the broader coalition-building required to achieve long-term legislative success. Washington runs on transactional relationships. If your advisory circle is entirely composed of insular loyalists, you lack the bridge-builders needed to negotiate across factions.
This insulation creates an echo chamber. It leads to erratic policy shifts that alienate potential allies. We saw this throughout Gabbard's career: the rapid transition from a conventional establishment Democrat to an anti-interventionist insurgent, and finally to a populist conservative ally. To the outside world, this looks like an ideological identity crisis. In reality, it is the natural consequence of an operational strategy guided by an insular group trying to navigate a system they do not fundamentally belong to.
But let’s not mistake tactical isolation for systemic subversion.
Stop Asking if She Has a Guru
The public and the press are asking the wrong questions. They are asking: Who is pulling the strings?
The question implies that if we just sever the strings from this specific Hawaiian group, the politician becomes independent. This is a naive understanding of power. If a politician severs ties with an unconventional group, they do not suddenly become an autonomous agent of the people. They simply get absorbed by the standard Washington machinery. They hire the standard consultants, take the standard donor money, and vote for the standard bills.
Instead of demanding that politicians have no influences, we should demand total transparency regarding all influences.
If the media wants to hold Gabbard accountable for following the guidance of her spiritual community, they must apply that exact same metric to every lawmaker who takes policy direction from pharmaceutical executives, technology monopolies, and Wall Street barons. Until they do, this entire controversy is nothing more than a selective political hit job wrapped in the guise of investigative journalism.
The 25,000 secret documents do not reveal a terrifying new threat to American democracy. They reveal that the alternative power structures look remarkably similar to the dominant ones. They use the same tactics, employ the same messaging scripts, and demand the same discipline. The only difference is that one group wears a suit, while the other does not.
Stop looking at the guru. Start looking at the system that makes handlers necessary in the first place.
