I'll Be Your Huckleberry

I'll Be Your Huckleberry
The Paul Truesdell Podcast and Blog September 23, 2026.
Tuesday at Stone Creek
On Tuesday, September 22, I sat in the Stone Creek Republican Club meeting with hundreds and hundreds of Republican residents, and a few non-residents, to hear our State Representative Ryan Chamberlin promote Amendment 3. It would significantly increase the homestead exemption and give tax relief to a lot of retirees. Ryan has worked diligently to abolish property taxes and now to increase the homestead exemption, and he should be respected for his efforts. 
This piece is not about Amendment 3. It is about what was going on in the reunion center room before the meeting began. 
Two candidates for school board arrived early and worked the crowd. They did the good old fashion shoe leather politicking; however, in my opinion, they spread false narratives to whoever would listen and some were gullible. 
Now, I want to make it perfectly clear why I want nothing to do with these two people as candidates or as fake Republicans. And it has to do with media bias, which is a word we like to use about the other side. And yes, I am going to connect liberal media bias with two members of the Marion County Republican Executive Committee who are also candidates for the Marion County School Board. 
You see, Republicans are quick to blame the liberal media for fake news. But when two of our own peddles it, suddenly it's perfectly fine. Well boys and girls, it is not. Somebody has to call out the extremes, on a regular basis, to keep things normal. To explain why, with facts and figures, not emotional baseless memes, and so, I have to go back a ways.
When We Ran Outside
Go back with me to the fifties and sixties, and on into the seventies. As kids, we were not overweight. We played outside from dawn to dusk and beyond. We ran. We did things, and we were outside playing football, baseball, basketball, tag, and running the neighborhood, not as hoodlums, but as kids, coming of age, learning, doing, and figuring out life, until somebody's mother called us in for supper.
That is not nostalgia talking. Those are the facts.
Now let’s talk about the Center for Disease Control. The CDC has been weighing and measuring Americans since the early sixties. In 1960 to 1962, about 13 percent of adults were obese. In the early seventies, about one child in twenty. Let me repeat that. Around ten percent of the adult population was obese and five percent of children. The CDC's most recent count, 2021 to 2023, found about four adults in ten, or forty percent, and about one child in five, twenty percent, are now obese.
As Robin would say: Holy cow Batman.
Ladies and gentlemen, when we grew up, we didn't have drug problems as kids, and we didn't have alcohol problems. And there was one more thing going on, and I want nobody to take this personally. There is a thing called fat shaming. I'm not talking about a kid who was a little bit overweight. I'm talking about the kids who were really, extremely, outrageously overweight. The ones who didn't exercise, who weren't out running with the rest of us or playing baseball, and when they were outside, they had a candy bar in their hand. They just didn't stop eating.
We engaged in fat shaming. I admit it. And right or wrong, that kept our nation healthy. And by God, we looked great. Just look at the millions of Polaroid photos, those black and why, grainy photos from back in the day. We looked great. 
Four Steps Down
Then, as time went on, it was the media, the left-wing media, that pushed to normalize abnormal behavior. The oddballs. And you know exactly what I am talking about. That was step one. Normalization. Now say that word with me out loud. Normalization.
Step two was celebration. The abnormal, the oddball, the weirdo and the extreme opinion, the argumentative, disruptive employee who causes havoc at work, the drug dependent, and the overall extremist who loves to bash anyone and everyone who will not kowtow to them, well they got the spotlight. That's when the pendulum began to swing.
Step three came when those of us who are the overwhelming majority said, wait a minute, we're not putting up with that. We were vilified for saying it. Now say it out loud, normalization, celebration, vilification.  Yes, vilification. 
This now leads to step four, which is when it became dangerous for the overwhelming majority of normal Americans.  Vilification was one thing but then came criminalization.  Yes, we became criminals because we, the majority truly believed in America as great and full of opportunities.  Why? Because too many people did not have the guts to stand up and call it the way it is. Criminalization. Yes, criminalization. Today, oh Dear God Almighty, make fun of the weirdo, the fellow who went to school and piled up degrees fifteen times over, piled higher and deeper, and can't get a job and doesn't know how to change a light bulb, and you are the one treated like a criminal. The light bulb, for the record, has not gotten any harder to change.
And so, Normalization. Celebration. Vilification. Criminalization. Four steps, and we took every one of them because not enough people stood up at the first one.
The New Era
Well, there's a new era. That new era began with Donald Trump. That's a fact.
In his first administration, as the 45th president, you had Republicans doing everything they could to defeat him. Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House are true RINOs – Republicans In Name Only. If you want to know why you have to be extremely firm with the people who interfere with progress, look no further than what Donald Trump went through, not only at the hands of the lamestream media and Democrats, but also with the Little Lord Fauntleroy’s within the Republican party.  
Folks, we've made a lot of progress getting back to making America great again.