Staying real, telling the truth, trusting your democracy, even when it’s uncomfortable. This is American patriotism.

In a political landscape where everyone calculates the cost of speaking the truth before they open their mouth, two Americans have decided it doesn’t matter. They don’t calculate. They just stand up.

So they are my heroes.

One is a Republican from Kentucky who’s never been mistaken for anyone’s favorite politician. The other is a former congresswoman from Georgia who spent years as the most controversial figure in the room—now she’s the most principled….

Marjorie Taylor Greene. And Thomas Massie. What a necessary pair.

Let’s love them.

Massie: Who Can’t Shut Up

Thomas Massie didn’t just push for accountability on the Epstein files. He built the mechanism to force them open. The discharge petition. The bipartisan coalition. The legal framework that made the DOJ comply—or at least pretend to.

And when Trump called him a “Third Rate Congressman” and endorsed a primary challenger funded by a super PAC that raised $2 million specifically to defeat him, Massie didn’t flinch. He posted:

“I cannot be bullied. I am not done.”

How great is that. That’s it. No press. No victim posturing. Just a quiet Kentucky congressman telling the nastiest political machine ever in America: ‘fraid not.

When the DOJ started playing games with redactions, Massie didn’t accept excuses. He said it plainly: “If this were a private law firm with 5 percent of the resources of the DOJ, this would have been done by the deadline.”

He threatened contempt proceedings. He demanded unredacted files. He kept showing up.

Thomas Paine didn’t have a party either. He just had a pen and the nerve to use it.

Greene: Convert to Conscience

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s story is remarkable and worth everyone’s time —not because she changed, but because she chose when to change.

She was a true believer. Voted with Trump 98% of the time. Stood beside him at rallies. Was his most vocal defender in Congress.

Then she met Epstein’s survivors. She must have seen the light.

She stood in front of the Capitol dressed in black, surrounded by women who had fought for decades for someone—anyone—in power to listen. Trump had just called her a traitor. She looked directly at the cameras and said: “He called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition.”

Then she turned his insult inside out. A real traitor, she said, is someone who sells out America’s interests for personal gain.

She resigned from Congress. Walked away from the party that made her famous. And last week she said it out loud to everyone:

“MAGA was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people.”

No hedging. No walking it back. Just the truth, delivered with the same directness that made her famous—aimed at the man who used to own her loyalty.

Rising When It Matters

We spend so much time sorting each other by party, ideology, tribe. Left. Right. MAGA. Progressive. None of it matters when the moment arrives.

The moment arrives when survivors are sitting in front of you, asking you to be brave. When a billionaire with the weight of the White House behind him tells you to sit down and shut up. When the cost of courage is real—a job challenge, public humiliation, a label like “traitor” from the most powerful person in the country.

Massie and Greene didn’t calculate. They didn’t negotiate either. Or go form a committee.

They just stood up.

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense from a cramped room with nothing but conviction. Paul Revere rode through the dark only because someone had to warn the country.

This is how to get it done — you just do it.

Greene and Massie are doing what Paine and Revere did: refusing to let power hide while we wait for justice.

That’s not politics — it’s courage.

Right now, in this country, they are what’s real. They are telling us to come out, showing us how to stand tall and reminding us what it means to be American.

KJS DC 2.26.