“Yesterday All my troubles seemed so far away Now it looks as though they’re here to stay Oh, I believe in yesterday” I was 5 years old when my father first took me to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The Sea Beach subway train we were riding in got stuck between Canal Street and 14th Street and didn’t move for what seemed like forever. We got to 34th Street very late and the parade was just about over. The crowd was enormous and all I could see was peoples’ coats pressed against my face. Finally my dad picked me up and put me on his shoulders. That wasn’t high enough either, because my dad was only five foot four. Then I saw it moving away in the distance. It was the giant Mickey Mouse balloon. But all I saw was Mickey’s ear. What a thrill…Mickey’s ear. When I got home I told my mother the parade was wonderful. “I saw Mickey’s ear…I saw Mickey’s ear!” I said over and over. My excitement over Mickey’s ear was a story they repeated every year during our family Thanksgiving dinner. My dad took me to the parade every year, and when I got married and had children, I took them to the parade every year. As things got better for me my view of the parade got better. First there were special seats along the parade route which were provided for me by Louise, a very special person in my ad agency’s media department. Then we had friends who lived on Central Park West and they had warm toasty apartments where we watched the parade go by. I saw the parade change and the balloons go from Popeye to Spider Man, from Felix the Cat to Kung Fu Panda™. But with every parade, nothing – nothing – came close to the joy of sitting on my daddy’s shoulders and seeing Mickey’s ear. I’m so thankful for yesterday. I was lucky. I was a kid growing up in the forties and fifties and this was such a wonderful country. We were safe living here and our country helped save the world. We were protected by the Greatest Generation, who fought – and some died – to keep us free. Then there were our politicians. They were wonderful. They cared. Whether you were a Republican or a Democrat you could depend on the fact that the great majority of politicians cared about this country. I grew up in a country where there were great presidents like Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower. Later on, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. What happened to us? Today we have a low-class, lying, inept thug like Donald Trump running and ruining the country. There are Democrats running for president who are scary. There’s dumb-but-happy Joe Biden. There’s that loony, lying, fake Native American Elizabeth Warren. And don’t forget that dumb old Socialist coot Bernie Sanders. The only two smart candidates who could unseat Trump, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and, most recently, Michael Bloomberg, don’t have a chance. At least that’s what we are being told by Democrat “insiders” who told us that Hillary would win in a landslide. Add to that the worst collection of Republican politicians that ever lived, headed by that corrupt creep Mitch McConnell, who lives deep in the pocket of the NRA. Worse, every politician in Congress – Democrat and Republican – is only interested in one thing: being re-elected and staying on the gravy train. They are sub-human vultures who damage us more and more every day. On a local level, we have the worst mayor in the history of New York. You can’t find a worse public official than Bill de Blasio. What he’s doing to our schools and our children is a crime. When, in a flash of insanity, de Blasio decided he would run for president, a number of exceptionally stupid and desperate people said they would vote for de Blasio just to get rid of Trump. And now a gaggle of inept Democratic politicians have decided to impeach Donald Trump. This, of course, will convince the 63 million people who voted for Trump that he is being jobbed by the Washington swamp and so they will put him back in office. This could mean the end of our country. The evil coming from Washington will lead to a malevolent wave that will invade our lives. No one will believe anything. The media in their hatred of Donald Trump have allowed him to corrupt their values. You can’t believe anything they say.
We’re sinking fast. At the rate our values are going down, who knows who our heroes will be in the future? Who knows, maybe someday, years in the future, a little boy will sit on his daddy’s shoulders at what used to be the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (now renamed the Queen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Parade) and say, “Daddy, Daddy, I see him! It’s the Jeffrey Epstein balloon! And look, here comes the Harvey Weinstein balloon!” -If you wish to comment on “Jerry’s Ink” please send your message to jerry@dfjp.com