If there is a God, then he has royally fucked up, unforgivably so. Millions were hoping for The Boss upstairs to do something to get rid of a much hated 80 year-old blonde before they did any more damage. But he wasn’t listening. Instead of getting rid of Dementia Donny in the White House, he got rid of Dolly Parton. What was He thinking about?
Of course, God wasn’t thinking of anything because he isn’t really there. He certainly didn’t decide to keep a malignant narcissist with frontotemporal dementia on this Earth ahead of a truly great woman who, quite apart from being a brilliant musician and songwriter, did so much to make the world a better place. Whether it was by way of encouraging literacy among children, financial supporting the creation of the Moderna vaccine that saved so many people from dying of Covid-19 and her support for minorities, especially the LGBTQ community, she earned the love people felt for her during her life and we all, if have any form of humanity, mourn her loss.
It isn’t true that the good die young and the bad live forever. Well, not all of them. Of course, some very bad people live into old age while good people die young but this is not down to some kind of supernatural power at work. It’s more to do with genetics and the hereditary conditions we carry around with us.
If people lived longer on the basis of doing good things and people died on the basis of doing bad things, we might feel better about our world. If we saw real live (I mean live, not life) consequences for pieces of shit like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, to name but two, we might also see some kind of fairness. But we don’t and we won’t. Instead, we have to put up with a world where the likes of Trump grower richer as a result of their greed, selfishness and bullying and where truly good people, like Dolly Parton, die before him. That’s just the way it is.
In times like these, we should remember that our only purpose on Earth is procreation. There is no other meaning of, or for, life. There is no Grand Design, no Big Plan. We are here because of the accident of our birth, nothing else, defying odds of one in 400 billion to be born at all. In short, we are not here for a reason, other than that one sperm impregnating that egg. We are born into a world that is neither fair or unfair.
Once we understand that, we can, one would hope, set aside our anger at Trump being alive when Parton is dead. It seems, maybe it is, very unfair, but I suppose we can console ourselves with the fact that we loved a good person who did more than most to make the world a better place.
History will treat Dolly Parton well. When Donald Trump dies – and he can’t be long for this world given his poor health – he will not be remembered well, other than by some, though by no means all, of his family and the particularly hard-of-thinking MAGA morons who swear by his every word.
People will always love Dolly Parton. And with good reason. Let us be comforted by that thought. I have been moved by what I have heard, seen and read about Ms Parton today, much more than perhaps I expected I might be. If there was a Heaven – and spoiler alert: there isn’t – then Dolly Parton would be in it. When Trump dies, I’ll wish there was a Hell for him to go to. His death alone, when it comes, will have to do.
