We Will Always Love You

Remarks August 30, 2026

I met with an old friend the other day. Like many others, she is despairing for our democracy and she feels helpless. “It’s all so overwhelming, so many things I love about our country are being trashed or violated or dismantled, what can I as one person possibly do?”

By all measures, it gets worse every day. Iran, Canada, now the massive oil claims on Venezuela, electric shock gloves for ICE agents, federal invasions of our privacy, real estate plans for a destroyed Gaza… it’s more than my friend can bear. So I told her some of what we here in Poulsbo do--like folks in towns and cities do across our nation.

We gather for rallies big and small, we wave signs, we sing in protest, and we march and show our city and its Sunday visitors that there is strong, nonviolent resistance. We continue to exercise our Constitutional right to free speech, trusting that truth and humanity will prevail sooner or later. We are working to change what we can change.

I told her that doing these things together lessens the despair, it helps us feel sane. But we need more people to engage in resistance to goose politicians to act, more people to hit the streets to let our leaders know we don’t want the ballroom and the pointless war in Iran, the propaganda and lies, the naked imperialism, the corruption, the perversion of religion for racist ends, the efforts to suppress the right to vote, the arrests and deportations of our immigrant neighbors.

This brings us to the Dolly Parton phenomenon. How many of you, readers, adored Dolly Parton and her values? She was not only a consummate and pure musician, a performer who shared her singing so sincerely with her audiences, a brilliant and prolific songwriter, a generous musical collaborator, a witty and folksy movie actor and TV host – Not only all that, but in addition she was an unparalleled philanthropist, pouring her efforts into thoughtful and direct action.

She was a committed supporter of medical research, a fabled champion of children’s literacy, and many other causes we suspect she was too modest to make public. Her philanthropy was why she wasn’t a billionaire: she kept giving her money away directly to what she believed to be important instead of hoarding her fortune.

The scale of the outpouring upon her death is so striking. Facebook, TV news, all the media are full of Dolly. She’s being canonized around the world. At Buckingham Palace the King’s Guard band played “9 to 5” during their changing of the guard. International musicians and fans from Japan to Europe to Uganda shared public tributes to her.  

The reason Dolly strikes such a resonantly unanimous chord is that she represents generosity, true faith, and empathy, precisely at a time when empathy according to our leaders is supposedly for losers. The Vice President famously said that empathy is actually a vulnerability, a political and moral weakness. According to Vance, we need to take care of ourselves and our families first; empathy for others is way down in his list of priorities.

And consider Elon Musk, the architect of DOGE. DOGE, we see in retrospect, hacked away at American government to the point of severely damaging programs we rely on--the capacity for predicting weather, for disaster aid, veterans’ care, disease prevention, foreign aid and diplomacy, universities, journalism, food safety, nuclear safety, and on and on – Elon Musk called empathy a "bug" in Western society that leads toward "civilizational suicide." It’s fair to say that the refusal of empathy—the callousness of this warped Administration we witness day after day--is official White House policy.

So what’s really going on with the canonization of Dolly Parton is that it’s a spontaneous response from the people and our civic institutions, it’s a reaction against the psychopathic amorality we’re seeing on a national and indeed global scale, and an instinctive call for taking care of one another.

As human beings we know that empathy is of the highest moral order, it’s what allows peace and life to flourish. Dolly Parton wasn’t a saint, but her life sets a moral example of radical kindness and generosity even as she achieved stardom.   

Even our criminal president knows not to start calling her names. But predictably, after referring to her “one of our greatest country singers,” he can only bring it all back to himself: “she really liked me, I will tell you!” And with public grief still fresh, Trump posted a fabricated AI image of himself with her, Trump and Dolly arm in arm beneath the White House portico. His posting is the very opposite of empathy or humankindness; it is calculated, pathological, obscene lying.

It may take the death of Dolly Parton to wake more Americans up to the moral depravity into which our nation has sunk, and if Parton’s death can accomplish that, if it can remind us of the urgent need for generosity and togetherness, it’s one of the most important achievements of her exemplary lifetime.

Finally, what can we do? We reiterate some words from last week:   Immigrants in Kitsap are living in fear. Courageous allies here, and many across our region and our nation, have formed food cooperatives to donate and distribute food and supplies to families too scared to leave their houses.

There are people in our community who’ve gotten school supplies for immigrant kids starting school tomorrow—and thank you to the people here who’ve been part of that wonderful effort.

There are people keeping watch over the schools that might be targeted by the ICE raids. There are groups doing the arduous, valuable work of legal advocacy for individuals detained in Tacoma.

There are groups on lookout patrols hoping to be able to document ICE actions which are indeed occurring in Kitsap—those videos we’ve seen of ICE arrests, sometimes brutal arrests, are all shot by ordinary citizens like you.

Anyone with a conscience and a heart knows we must help and protect our vulnerable neighbors. These efforts are growing, and they need you. Join or organize a neighborhood group to bring food to the food banks or to food collectives for direct help. Or get yourself trained to serve on patrols, protecting schools.   

And crucially, it’s time for all of us to get to work on elections: getting out the vote, protecting the vote, doorbelling for candidates we know will work to represent us and not corporations or bigotry, talking to relatives, friends, and neighbors about the importance of the midterm elections and getting them involved too. 

You can make a big difference in these desperate times, and hopefully, years from now, you’ll be able to tell your children and grandchildren that you helped turn the tide.