Tulsi Gabbard is a rebel in a state that does not know what to do with rebels.

We claim to like independent politicians willing to kick butt, break the mold and overcome gridlock, someone who is outside the tired old regular Hawaii Democratic box. But not really.

That’s why people seem so ambivalent about Gabbard. It’s like the punk band Green Day’s song, “She’s a Rebel”:

“She’s a rebel, she’s a saint. She’s salt of the earth. And she’s dangerous.”

Hawaii’s 2nd District congresswoman has moved from rebel to mystery woman, from hero to suspected political opportunist.

Recently, Gabbard resigned her position on the Democratic National Committee so that she could campaign for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Big deal. The DNC has no effect on the everyday life of a congresswoman, especially one in a safe district like Gabbard’s. It has no direct control over a House or Senate member, especially if campaign funds are not a big concern.

So why such anxiety about her move? It’s not like she dropped out of Punahou.

The reason? Because her independence has become suspect.

Mixing it up with conservatives on TV is a form of working across the aisle in a political culture where political segregation and isolation is so common.

A double-standard has developed. Regarding ordinary politicians the question is: “What is she really up to?” Curiosity.

For Gabbard the question we ask is the same but with a hugely different emphasis: “What is she really up to? Suspicion and distrust.

To understand this, let’s do a quick comparison between Gabbard and U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz. Both went to Washington at about the same time. Both were viewed as fresh faces that might actually help break the Washington gridlock.

Schatz has been very good at this. He has, as he promised, reached across the aisle, working successfully with Republican legislators, particularly on environmental matters.

Schatz has done this the good old-fashioned way through diligent, hard-working nose-to-the-grindstone, making-contacts kind of inside work. A good liberal, but also a hardworking, flexible one. Dan Inouye would be proud.

Gabbard’s independence and bipartisanship has not been so conventional or quiet. She has publicly criticized President Obama’s foreign policy and Hillary Clinton’s penchant for interventionism.

Well above the radar, but those criticisms are well within the wheelhouse of Democratic Party discourse.

What appears to make her dangerous rather than gutsy is how and where she makes them. She appears on:

Fox News! Fox News!

Yes, the devil’s lair.

Nevertheless, mixing it up with conservatives on TV is a form of working across the aisle in a political culture where political segregation and isolation is so common.

I know that this is as far from the Lincoln-Douglas debates as Hawaii is from solving its affordable housing problem.

But what Gabbard is doing is showing a degree of independent thinking on issues that have stymied even the best progressives like, say, our president.

And she is engaging other politicians, not simply offering the usual bromides that politicians offer to the folks back home.

Oh and by the way, according to Rate My Congress’s ratings of the of the 2013-14 Congress, both Tulsi Gabbard and Brian Schatz were “weakly liberal.” Gabbard got the same score as that infamous archconservative Nancy Pelosi.

The media’s attitude toward Gabbard is, the less we know, the more suspicious we need to be.    

Looking for a smoking gun.

So there was a big fuss when she hired a political neophyte as her chief of staff.

Why? Okay, the guy’s qualifications were not obvious.  Political insiders were, as Civil Beat put it, “baffled.” (News flash: this is not the first time political insiders have been baffled.)

But the man is a personal staff member, not the custodian of our nuclear arsenal.

Quick, name and state the qualifications of any other Hawaii politician’s chief of staff.

Our political imagination has transformed Tulsi Gabbard from a salt of the earth rebel to a person of mystery connoting danger, intrigue and deception.

In this view, Gabbard is not who she claims to be, and she does not claim to be who she really is.   

Damned if she doesn’t and damned if she does, which was precisely the operating rule of the Salem witchcraft trials.

This view of Gabbard says a lot about our own implicit biases and latent fears. 

Rebellion is okay, as long as it is our own kind of rebellion, the kind that is conventional enough not to threaten our own precious and, of course, always perfectly correct beliefs.

That’s a rebel without any claws.