Thomas Massie: Live by the Sword – Die by the Dagger

He’s been called a “political stuntman,” a “third-rate grandstander” and a “dangerous nuisance” by the Washington establishment. Thomas Massie is the name on many people’s lips thanks to his fearless litigation of the Epstein scandal and rejection of slavish American vassalage to Israel. Who exactly is this libertarian maverick and self-described tech geek who’s become the Martin Luther-like petitioner of our Epsteinian Era?

Thomas Massie’s rise to cult status began with the 2018 documentary that showcased the congressman’s off-the-grid lifestyle in rural Kentucky – not far from where he grew up and reportedly never encountered a traffic light until his college years in Massachusetts. Everything on Massie’s property was constructed and crafted by him – from the self-joining wooden framing of his house and locally sourced stone exterior, to the modified Tesla battery module that powers his home and various other contraptions. It’s not hard to see how the inventiveness of the small town prodigy led him to M.I.T., where he complemented his electrical engineering degree with a mechanical engineering one. He found the time to, concurrently, launch a tech firm that secured 30 patents and raised $32 million of venture capital.

Massie sold the company in 2003 and decided to raise cattle, as well as four children, full-time in Kentucky. The banana peel that Massie slid into politics on was the steady encroachment of regulations from Washington, to which Massie responded by writing letters to the editor and organizing local resistance. Somewhere along the way it dawned on Massie that the only way to safeguard constitutional values in the long run was to complete the engineering trifecta and become a social engineer, which is to say, a politician at federal level. There may just be something in Kentucky’s water, or perhaps gene pool, if we recall that Congress already has one curly-haired libertarian diehard from Kentucky – Rand Paul.

Massie’s first major impact in Congress occurred in 2020, when he was one of the few opponents of COVID hysteria and tyranny. Former presidential candidate John Kerry, of all people, attempted to counter his reputation as a charisma drain by tweeting “Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.” It was in revenge for Massie rightfully humiliating Kerry’s “pseudoscience degree” during a 2018 hearing on climate change.

Massie’s lone opposition to the coronavirus relief bill of 2020 earned Massie bipartisan ire as he forced Congress to assemble at great inconvenience. But all Massie wanted was at least some recorded accountability for the $2.2 trillion in spending, unprecedented numbers in US history. Nancy Pelosi was the one who labelled Massie a “dangerous nuisance,” but Massie was once again proven right, on principle and in practice, given the associated waste and fraud that subsequently came to light. With such principled constitutionalists present to exercise legislative correctness, Pelosi probably feared Massie might go after insider traders next.

Few could argue that Massie doesn’t walk the walk. He’s also prepared to drive all night from Kentucky to Washington if needed, as he did for his CARES Act point-of-order. Massie is known for avoiding flying and hotels, in fact his claim to be the greenest member of Congress remains unchallenged by anyone on the left. Massie even sleeps in a camper van at an undisclosed location near the Capitol so as to save taxpayer and personal expense. The only other politician with a similar custom was the late Colonel Gaddafi, who preferred a large Bedouin tent when travelling abroad. Ahead of the UN General Assembly in 2009, Gaddafi booked a New York estate belonging to none other than Donald Trump, although local protest managed to cancel the arrangement before the Brotherly Leader arrived.

Massie, meanwhile, is seeing his own profile as an admired and comradely figure growing in the midst of widespread MAGA disaffection. It’s the orthodox and paleophytes who’ve been outcast and excommunicated by the Conmander in Chief Trump. Massie actually seems to be relishing the fight, and has even embraced the RINO epithet (Republican in Name Only), since it’s rather the rest of the party that’s abandoned fiscal conservatism. He’s no doubt developed a thick skin for his troubles, while his colleagues channel the emblematic Republican elephant if only to link trunk and tail in blind obedience. That is the difference between being an ideologue and a partisan, as Massie likes to point out. An ideologue is loyal to principles, whereas a partisan is merely loyal to political tribe and leader.

Possibly the most craven archetype of this latter species is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, because if there’s one knob to the rubber-stamp legislature of the uniparty, it is this elevated conformist. Johnson has comfortably survived motions to vacate the chair simply because he gives the Democrats as much as they could hope for from a Republican, including the contentious Ukraine aid package that Massie and many Republicans opposed.

Despite Massie’s ongoing marginalization and the general betrayal of the America First movement, he remains hopeful and says he would not stay in Congress if it were otherwise. He’s now campaigning for an eighth consecutive term, which makes him perhaps the best argument against imposing term limits. The past year or so of this most daring and effectual incarnation of Massie yet has coincided with both a new look and a new wife (as Trump rather crudely alluded to), but it’s not come without its costs.

The Israel lobby has been incredibly hostile to Massie ever since he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and revealed the bombshell that every member of Congress essentially has an AIPAC handler. Massie has continued the good fight, and last year attempted to require dual-citizenship disclosure for all political candidates at the federal level. He’s since been smeared as both disloyal to the United States and an antisemite (!), while three New York billionaires now collude to unseat him from office. They are Henry Paulson, Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer – who think they know better than the people of Kentucky’s fourth district.

Should the financial warfare and intimidation fail, one has to wonder what comes next. It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong, as Voltaire so deftly observed. Following Trump’s latest attacks on Massie as a “lightweight” and “moron,” Massie probably reasons he would have better dialogue with ex-President of Haiti, Leslie Voltaire. This begs the question why Massie, a wealthy but modest man, continues to commit to deeper high-stakes political combat rather than resting on his laurels. He’d surely prefer to enjoy the fruits of his labor back in Appalachiastan, as he calls it, instead of arguing about Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan. He’d be the first to admit he wishes he could spend more time with his beloved Angus cattle, but instead he’s defending the “goyim” mentioned in the Epstein files. Most people pick their battles in life, but some battles seem to pick men of exemplary valor, whether they want this calling or not.

Some view Massie as little more than a loopy libertarian and unrealistic utopianist whose political trials and tribulations are Don Quixote-like. The tragedy of valiant men falling by the wayside – not from proportional risk but through pure skullduggery was perhaps most memorably coined by nineteenth-century novelist Alexandre Dumas, whose aphorism Live by the Sword – Die by the Dagger sums up this timeless tragedy.

Barely six months have passed since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and it’s more or less clear that his slaying was in vain – only dovetailing with the vanity of his Jezebel widow Erika and TPUSA’s new handlers. It’s also worth recalling another largely forgotten conservative who died this month 14 years ago, Andrew Breitbart. He was an anticorruption activist in Washington, as well as a proto-Pizzagate sexual abuse exposer. He officially died of heart failure at the age of 43, but even the appointed coroner subsequently dropped dead with arsenic poisoning.

Such morbid themes may not be appetizing food for thought (especially on the Ides of March), but it was Massie himself who recently felt compelled to warn his followers of the magnitude of danger that looms near. This is the state of the Republic, and what a sitting congressman must resort to for preemptive security.

Readers who are American citizens or residents and wish to slightly balance the scales of justice and ledger of campaign finances may do so via this link. The showdown is May 29, although the race has already well and truly heated up as Trump has attacked him in typical Trumpian fashion:

“We got to get rid of this loser. This guy is bad,” Trump said at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky. “He’s disloyal to the Republican Party. He’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America. And he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”

Let’s hope it reaches critical mass by the ballot and not the bullet.