It did seem like there was a coming together, however briefly, after the death of Dolly Parton. That is what she would have wanted. Over and over, she resisted attempts to make her take a side.
She might have fallen off a turnip truck, but she was nobody’s fool. She knew what so few Hollywood folks today know: you want your audience to have access to the dream, too. No one knew that better than Dolly Parton. Her life was a dream, and she wanted to share it with everyone.
Everything she built, made, wrote, or recorded had its roots in the South—in the land of hillbillies and Appalachia—but her arms were open to everyone.
These places are often populated by Trump supporters who have found in him a representative, as unlikely as that may seem. He trudged into the muddy, toxic land of East Palestine, Ohio, and became a hero while the Left was raiding Mar-a-Lago and trying to throw him in jail.
Her life was about bringing joy to everyone, especially those who felt left behind by our culture. She wasn’t going to leave them behind.
The last thing Dolly Parton would want is for her memory to be co-opted and channeled into the firehose of hate that now defines today’s Left.
You might have to be like me—someone who spent a lot of time inside the utopia we all built, so big it included all of Hollywood, most universities and schools, most institutions, and all of culture—and then watched it collapse into a mass-hysteria dystopia to understand that they’re under the spell of a mass delusion. They don’t know who the real Trump is. They probably never will.
It was naive of me to think these unhinged people could share in Dolly’s legacy without their signature hate wrapping around them, the story, and the entire country, dragging everything back down into that dark place. Yes, even someone as lovely as Dolly could not escape the grip of totalitarianism.
“She would hate you,” they hiss.
“She was ONE OF US, not one of YOU!”
“Don’t you DARE mourn her death.”
It’s the Krassensteins. It’s Harry Sisson. It’s all those wild-eyed, crazy women who edge ever so closely to the Manson family.
These are people who demand that no artist play the Kennedy Center. These are people who demand that no one accept the Medal of Freedom if Trump is giving it out. These are people who demand that no artists play at America’s 250. Why wouldn’t they also exploit the death of Dolly Parton?
The Right might be depicted as cruel and hateful to people on the Left, but that’s only because, as with every other powerful word, they’ve co-opted “hate” to mean “against what we believe.” And love, to them, is “everything we say.” So if you oppose transgender ideology being pushed onto kids, that’s “hate.” If you support it, that’s “love.”
Dolly Parton, however, obeyed the rules of an older world where words meant what they meant. Hate means hate. Love means love. But how do we even begin to define it when the little hearts they press express hatred too? Hearts of hate.
This is all they have, all that defines them, all they can offer the American people: hate like us. HATE. But Dolly wasn’t about that. She refused to play along, and she probably did love Donald Trump because she was not a shallow, one-dimensional psychopath. She was able to see the good in people, even if they did not agree with her politics.
The last thing she would want is for her legacy to become yet another political weapon for the people with all the cultural power—people who do not think the other half of the country has a right to participate in any of it. She believed in bringing people together, not driving them apart, especially with music.
Resting in peace would mean her legacy was not just another No Kings protest. Her truck stop was not built only for truckers who agreed with her politics. Her books for children were not woketacular propaganda aimed only at kids who take advantage of Zohran Mamdani’s Parents’ Night Out. She would never have been that shallow, stupid, or cruel. That is why she was exceptional.
At least some folks have the right idea:
Dolly Parton would not have wanted so many people to use her death to wish for Trump’s death instead—to attach her departing spirit to something so dark and ugly. These are people who can’t win elections, so they just want to kill everyone or watch them die.
This is what totalitarianism looks like in practice. To them, everything must be sucked into their black hole of control. They control culture, so unless you are a compliant thought-robot or a true believer, you are not welcome.
It must be exhausting to spend every second of every day twisted up in hate over Donald Trump. What a terrible waste of the last ten years, especially since all they ever had to do was offer people something better. The problem is, they don’t want to talk to them at all, let alone humanize them.
I always come back to the same place. What do they plan to do should the dreaded day arrive, and they’re back in power? What will they do with all the people they want in prison or dead?
I don’t know, but I do know what Dolly would have wanted. She would have wanted people to come together in mourning, in love, and ultimately in the joy she brought to everyone’s life.
What she would want is for people to celebrate her songs and her ideas for all time, no matter who they were, where they came from, or how they voted.
Let her rest in peace.
Yes, the leftists must politicize everything. Everything must be turned into a litmus test. It’s exhausting and it’s sickening. And, yes, it’s totalitarian.
They don’t want to get along. They want to control the narrative at all costs. It’s the only thing that gives them peace - lording their virtuosity over all others. It’s all they care about. There’s never an issue that can’t be made into this. They really hate Trump because he understands this and does it right back. He plays by their own rules