I spent the day ugly crying at Instagram where seemingly the entire nation in unison was mourning Dolly, who passed yesterday at the age of 80, and singing her songs. 80 is a good long life, I’m told. It should be enough time with someone. However, we all seem to agree that it wasn’t enough time with her.  We all seem to feel that she still had more to teach us. We weren’t done basking in her presence and taking notes.

Normally,  I don’t write about astrology here, or tarot, or ancestor work, although they are all incredibly important parts of my life and have been for years.  In honor of Dolly, I’m changing that.  I’m done trying to come off as dude-coded in the hopes of…what? Being taken more seriously?

Just a couple of Dolly’s most important lessons were:

Femininity- being « girl-coded », if you will- can be your superpower if you claim it and make it your own.

And

Never be ashamed of or embarassed by who you are and what you like.

So, good student of Dolly that I am, I’m going to speak my girl-coded truth here. If you don’t like astrology, you don’t have to read it (said with a wink and a 1000 watt smile). 

In early 2026, Saturn, the planet of discipline and structure, and Neptune, the planet of the dream realm, the unconscious, and the spirit, met at 0 degrees of Aries, the warrior. This is a cosmic reset.

Together in Aries, Saturn and Neptune represent a paradox: How to turn formless spiritual ideals into something tangible and lasting- towers and weapons, foundations and oases that exist in the real world where we need them. 

Starting with this conjunction, Astrologers have dubbed 2026 the introduction of the era of the « spiritual warrior ».

Which brings us back to Dolly.

I have said many times in my life that the closest thing I have to a true native religion- a bone deep, pre-conscious religion- is Music, and to some degree specifically American Music. What do I mean by this? I mean that my nation is composed of the descendents, mostly, of wounded people (Dolly’s ancestors came from exploited, extracted, crushed and brutalized Wales- to Appalachia where they experienced pretty much more of the same). Virtually every American is walking around with some kind of trauma, some profound wound that our ancestors passed to us, either by virtue of what they experienced on this land,  or what they experienced somewhere else that led to them migrating here (or being brought here against their will), or both.  They passed us the wounds of sins that were committed against them,  and in many cases the deep spiritual wound of sins they themselves committed against others. We are wounded people. I believe that this woundedness is our defining characteristic as Americans.

It is in our music- most powerfully, and perhaps only in our music- that we become not just wounded people, but wounded healers. American Music is spiritual alchemy. It is ritual. It is collective transmutation, transcendence and communion. It is powerful, and it is healing.

Dolly was a priestess of American music, and she came by her vocation honestly. She came up in East Tennessee, in an Appalachian holler in a one room cabin with 11 siblings. She was raised on faith, love, and music. Music was the gift that connected her first with millions in her country and throughout the world,  but Music was not her only gift. It turned out that once music opened a connection so that she could be witnessed and heard by the world,  Dolly had many other lessons to teach us. Here are the things she taught so powerfully by example that I believe make her a beacon, a true north to guide us in the era of the spiritual warrior:

Kindness. In her 80 years, not a single person has said she was ever unkind. Imagine the spiritual discipline it takes to always be kind,  even when,  as she was, you are mocked for your accent, your appearance, your « hillbilly » upbringing. When people constantly say or imply that you are dumb or trashy or uncultured. How difficult it must be to smile warmly, as she did, and explain with so much humor, warmth and grace, that you are who you are and you like what you like, and you’re not sorry.  She would smile and explain that her illiterate father was one of the wisest people she’d ever known,  and that the people she came from in East Tennessee were intelligent, resourceful, loving, hard-working, faithful, joyful, funny, and worthy of appreciation and respect. She would never humiliate or lash out at her interlocutor, but she also would never abandon or betray herself, her family and community,  or anyone else (the LGBTQ community for instance) who she felt was being unjustly stereotyped, excluded, or maligned. Her kindness and the discipline with which she applied it is a master class.

Dolly was a spiritual Jedi of Humility- insisting, always, that she was not in a position to judge or place herself above anyone. Generosity. Curiosity. Courage. Humor. Loyalty. Joy. Those were Dolly’s weapons.

Dolly was born with the sun on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius (January 19). Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and is generally understood to be the most conservative sign. Capricorn is about building and preserving the value of what came before. Aquarius is in many ways the  opposite- it represents innovation and experimentation, the weird and the wacky, the eclectic, electric, collective future. Dolly picked up that good old American music- the music of religious revivals and holler fiddle tunes and slave work songs and spirituals and all the combinations that had come from Africa and the British Isles of her own ancestors, as well as from Native American musical traditions, and which had flourished for two hundred+ years in the mountains of east Tennessee, and she carried it into the 20th and 21st centuries.  She took it on television and onto the internet. She laid it at the feet of the whole evolving, changing,  dynamic world,  and found that yes, it still has power to heal people and bring them together.

Dolly was born with her moon on the cusp of Leo and Virgo. Leo the performer, the proud, gloriously sparkling lioness with a spellbinding voice and a powerful charismatic aura. Something deep inside her was certain that she was born to be a star. She always seemed at ease in a spotlight, on a stage. She knew she belonged there- but she also had the heart of a servant, which is the mark of Virgo. Attention to details, attention to the wellbeing of others, a desire to do right, and to do it well. A desire, in a strange contradictory twist, not to draw attention to yourself.  I think this dynamic natal moon is what allowed Dolly to be so sparkly, so larger than life,  without ever attracting envy or bitter rivalry. Even when she was on top of the world, she would always be the first one to share whatever she had,  including attention, glory or accolades, or to get down in the dirt and lend somebody a helping hand. 

Dolly said, « if you see somebody without a smile,  share one of yours ».

Sing a song.  Tell a joke. Give someone a compliment who maybe hasn’t heard one in a long time. That’s one way to honor Dolly.

Defend someone who is being unjustly attacked. Include someone who is being  excluded. Remember that all the children are our children, and they all deserve attention, resources, respect, inclusion, and love, as Dolly did when she built the imagination library.

As for me, one of these days I’m going back to my favorite karaoke at the Mel-O-Dee bar, tucked into a strip mall next to the Trader Joe’s in el cerrito plaza. In a room full of every kind of person you can imagine- a room in the United States of America- I’m going to do my best to sing Jolene through my tears. I’m going to take myself to the river, and in honor of Dolly,  I’m going to pray.

It takes a long time for the Titanic to sink,  but, eventually there’s a huge booming crack, the bow and stern both point skywards, and it all goes down remarkably quickly.

Yesterday the U.S national debt passed a historic benchmark of 40 trillion dollars. Every single day, we pay a couple billion dollars just in interest on that debt. In another year or two the largest expenditure, greater than military spending, medicare, and social security spending, will be simply paying to SERVICE the debt- not even to pay it down at all only interest payments. In the meantime,  the U.S continues on an unabated and absolutely inexcusable deficit spending spree. Yesterday treasury secretary Scott Bessent issued a slew of short term bonds to buy back long term debt to try to stabilize the long-term treasury markets as yields are rising precipitously. Why have yields been rising? Lots of reasons,  honestly- these things are incredibly complex in some respects- but there are a couple glaring, simple reasons that most 10 year olds could understand if you did a good job explaining it to them. The first one is that Americans and their leaders have clearly demonstrated for more than 10 years that we are not serious or trustworthy people.  We’re basically Veruca Salt with Nukes. Now that we have elected Donald Trump for the second time,  the rest of the world knows it wasn’t a fluke- it’s a structural, cultural, endemic problem. Trump isn’t just a sick individual, but the symptom and representative of a sick, stupid and antisocial society.

What does this have to do with yeilds? Well, everything.  For decades,  investors showed up at U.S bond auctions and everyone was willing to lend us money at low interest rates BECAUSE THEY TRUSTED US. They thought they knew who we were.  We were trustworthy. We were reliable. We were the best bet for this kind of investment because we were known to be serious (or serious enough) people. Now the mask has come off, or something has dramatically changed,  but in any case,  our bond auctions have been pretty sparsely populated lately. The only way at this point to get anyone to lend us money is to offer higher and higher returns in the form of higher interest rates. 

And we are STILL deficit spending, more and more every day,  for war, and frankly,  for corruption. As Kyle Kulinski always says,  the Pentagon is basically a slush fund for the Epstein class. It has failed 8 audits in a row and we are running out of munitions 6 months into Trump’s illegal war on Iran. The only money we really know leaves the Pentagon is the billions every year that go to Israel to keep doing genocide and illegal land grabs on our dime. Where does the rest of the money allocated to the Pentagon go? Honey, I wish I knew. 

In this country,  we don’t have health care.  We don’t have education.  We don’t have childcare.  We don’t have infrastructure. All this borrowing is not for any of those things.  We are in 40 Trillion and rising dollars of debt because it costs money to blow up kids and line the pockets of Trump and his Oligarchs.

All bad news, right? Well, yeah, but here’s the good news (not painless, but I would argue still good): it can’t go on forever.  In fact,  although it takes a long time for the Titanic to sink, I would posit that it can’t stay afloat much longer.  The deficit is 40 trillion and going nowhere but up. The world is dumping U.S T-notes and buying gold. Even Japan, the largest foreign holder of U.S treasuries, because of its own currency and liquidity issues, is starting to sell U.S treasuries and re-shore its wealth. The real economy has atrophied and shrivelled for years under financialization, inflation and rising costs, dysfunction, the predations of private equity, etc. and the lemon of the working class has been squeezed entirely dry. Car repos are high and rising.  Rates of delinquency on mortgages, student debt and credit card debt are rising. There IS no new source of revenue to start paying down this debt UNLESS the U.S government would get serious and tax the 1% and the giant multinational U.S corporations. That’s who the corruption has directed all this borrowed money to. In order to pay back lenders and pay down the debt, you have to get money from the people who are sitting on all the money.  And this regime will never do that. 

So, 40 trillion and rising. Weirder and more desperate shell games and balance rollovers from Bessent. Fewer and fewer buyers at the bond auctions. Rates that will continue to rise no matter what Bessent does, and the insane spending on kid-killing and pocket-lining continuing at a steady clip, with borrowed money, until… until what?

I honestly don’t see how this ends in any way other than the U.S defaulting on it’s debt. Which, to be clear, would lead to a collapse of the global economy and financial system. To my mind,  it’s a question not of if, but of when.

And that actually makes me feel not scared, but hopeful. When I (and many others) said in the beginning of this that we should, to the best of our ability, stop spending money on non-essentials, that we should slow-roll or withdraw our participation in the labor economy, it was because I have believed from the very beginning that the only way to effectively neutralize the fascist regime in the U.S, to stop the construction of the wraparound Palantir survellance state and the concentration camps and ICE gestapo, the U.S funded genocide in Palestine, the illegal war on Iran and the cruel and fatal blockade on Cuba and war crimes in the Caribbean, the saber-rattling at Canada, Mexico, and Greenland and the relentless extraction of the multiracial working class by a theocratic white supremacist Gilead ruling class was (and still is) to destabalize, cripple and ultimately end U.S economic supremacy, dollar dominance, and the economic coercive control in the global financial system (including, critically, the petrodollar) that has allowed the U.S to deficit spend as much as it wants for 80 years. I knew,  and still do,  that all of this power and the magnet inside the coercive control was the resilience and percieved stability of the « middle » (working) class in America. If we are buying, we’re working,  we’re paying taxes. We’re « milkable ». It has always been the percieved health of the American consumer- we the people being willing to always keep buying shit, even with money we don’t have- that has made lenders confident that the U.S will have the money to pay back it’s debts, and thus, lenders have been willing to accept low interest rates on U.S bonds. The kryptonite these ghouls have NEVER wanted us to get our grubby little hands on is the knowledge that WE hold the power. Their ability to keep up their violence and their grift depends entirely on us, at the end of the day.  But now,  I think it’s obvious and many more of us are realizing it. They cannot hide the collapse behind circular financing and balance rollovers and currency swaps forever. What we are seeing in the bond market in late August 2026 is at least in part the first really signifigant fruit of our economic resistance to the Trump regime.

I find it invigorating, and I think you should, too.

What will the ocean’s surface look like, after the ship goes down? How will the spray feel on our faces?