One 80-year-old icon built an empire from nothing — and the other is Donald Trump

I had reservations about writing this column because Dolly Parton doesn’t deserve to be in the same piece as Donald Trump, let alone the same sentence.

She was famously non-political, and I think that’s one thing Americans of all stripes admired about her. And in her own way, she was vocal about the rights of the poor, marginalized, LGBTQ+ individuals, and had a sincere philosophy of unbridled acceptance.

Then I happened upon numerous social media posts that essentially said that the wrong 80-year-old died, and if you know, you know.

I got to thinking about the comment, and how it sort of forces us to choose which version of the American dream we actually believe in, Dolly’s or Trump’s. And so, in homage to Dolly, I thought the juxtaposition needed to take place because it’s so stark and illuminating.

Dolly Parton was born in a two-room log cabin on Locust Ridge in the Smoky Mountains, one of 12 children, raised without electricity or running water, in a coat her mother sewed together out of rags.

Donald Trump was born in a mansion in Queens, the son of a millionaire developer who, according to a New York Times investigation, funneled him at least $413 million in today’s dollars over the course of his life.

One of them built an empire out of nothing but talent, grit, and compassion. The other inherited a fortune and spent 50 years building a brand only for himself, with a talent for lying and cheating, and with empathy toward no one.

One was a huge success. The other, an abysmal failure.

Both have spent six decades turning themselves into American symbols — albeit vastly different — instantly recognizable by first name alone, and that’s where the similarities end sharply. Because Dolly Parton, whose death has left the entire country in mourning, spent that fame building things for other people.

Donald Trump has spent his time building things for himself, and this week, in the ugliest and most literal way yet, he’s threatening to demolish a monument to a slain president.

Dolly built you up, Donald tears you down.

She built Dollywood in her own dirt-poor home county, not as a monument to herself, but as a way to create jobs for the neighbors and family she grew up alongside. The Imagination Library (which some GOP states are working to gut), which she founded in 1995, still mails free books every month to millions of children around the world, most of whom will grow up and never know Dolly gave them the gift of reading.

When wildfires ripped through Sevier County in 2016 and left families with nothing, Dolly started the My People Fund and had $1,000 checks in survivors’ hands within days, no strings attached.

Her donation to Vanderbilt University helped fund the clinical trials that became the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, a shot that has, by now, saved an uncountable number of strangers’ lives.

Now look at what Donald did, or didn’t do. Trump Steaks. Trump Vodka. Trump Airlines. Trump Mortgage. All defunct. Trump University, which cost him $25 million in a fraud settlement after ordinary people who trusted his name lost their savings.

Multiple Atlantic City casino bankruptcies, in which lenders, contractors, and small vendors absorbed the losses while Trump walked away intact. Every one of these ventures, which put his name up in lights, eventually went dark.

And now, he’s tearing down, or threatening to tear down, things that are not even his.

This week it was revealed that Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that if Trump isn’t allowed to put his name on the Kennedy Center and shut the building down for two years of renovation, the center may simply have to be torn down and replaced with an open-air amphitheater.

The Kennedy Center is a living memorial that Congress established in 1964 to honor President John F. Kennedy. And Trump’s own Justice Department just told a federal court, in writing, that the building’s survival is contingent on Trump getting his name carved into it.

He is the same thug who tore down the East Wing of the White House to build his gilded ballroom that is only open to the wealthy, and the same madman who is pushing for a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery that he told a reporter, when asked who it was for, was “Me.”

One 80-year-old spent her life quietly building things that will keep helping people and make them happier long after she’s gone. The other will go down in history as a loser who did nothing to help anyone but himself.

Hopefully, in 50 years, kids will still be riding roller coasters at Dollywood and still finding Imagination Library books in their mailboxes. Somewhere, a stranger will still be alive because of a vaccine Dolly Parton’s money helped fund.

Trump’s arch, if it’s ever finished, will be a large door with his name on it. And the ballroom, a blight on the White House and a slap in the face to hard-working Americans.

Look, I don’t like comparing Dolly to Trump, because there is no comparison, and it’s not fair to her memory, or to the angel of a person that she was. But if we must look at what they both represent, it forces us to choose between a path of unifying grace and one of deep, cruel division.

America is at an inflection point now as the midterms approach, and I for one believe in fate and divine intervention. So, in that spirit, literally and figuratively, perhaps Dolly’s death at this critical time in our nation’s history is a reminder of what we could be versus what we have become

A country where one kind of American uses fame, fortune and influence to build something that outlives her, while another uses the power of the presidency to tear things down to feed his own ego.

Maybe that is the choice in front of us now. Not Dolly or Donald, because there is no comparison. But Dolly’s America or Trump’s America. One builds people up. The other tears them down. And if we have learned anything from Dolly Parton’s life, it is that what we leave behind matters far more than how big we managed to make our own name.