By Stu Strumwasser, author of A Real Collusion
Throughout my entire adult life I have identified as a political Independent and always felt like an outsider—although it turns out that I am part of a silent majority. One experiences a strange combination of discordant emotions — a mixture of vindication and regret — when learning that an uncommon lifestyle choice wasn’t necessarily “weird,” or somehow evidence of a character flaw. Maybe I was just a bit ahead of my time during my formative years — but I certainly felt less precocious and more gaslighted, the victim of psychological gut-punches.
I was five years old in 1971, when my family moved to a town called Lynbrook on Long Island. We were a Jewish family, and my parents were told by the real estate agent that Lynbrook had a diverse population, mostly Irish, Italian and Jewish — about a third of each. That was true. However, she failed to tell them that nearly every single Jewish family lived south of Sunrise Highway and their kids attended Lynbrook South Middle School. I went to Lynbrook North. Being one of only two Jewish kids in a grade of around a hundred throughout elementary and middle school never made me feel persecuted, but it always made me feel different. The acknowledgement of that difference was unspoken, but pervasive and constant. When I abandoned religion entirely, around the age of thirteen, it was even worse. Today in the United States, around 30% of us are non-religious, but when I was growing up I sometimes felt like the only nonbeliever in the world.
In 1980, at the tender age of fourteen, I read, “Diet For A Small Planet,” freaked out, and around a week later announced to my parents that I had become a vegetarian. Their response was to threaten that if I didn’t see a psychiatrist, they would refuse to let me get a learner’s permit. From the time I was fourteen until well into my thirties, I could rarely eat a meal without a family member, or a friend, or a waiter pointing out my strangeness. The verbal barbs that were breaded and deep-fried and hidden beneath the veils of jokes seemed relentless. Was it so incredibly weird to be a vegetarian in the 1980s or 1990s? Not really. It was not unusual on Earth — just in Lynbrook.
I turned eighteen in 1984. At the time, most people turning eighteen didn’t give much thought as to which political party to join. One joined the party one’s parents belonged to. We identified with our neighbors and communities. My parents were Democrats… so, of course, I registered as an independent! It’s on the subject of politics and party affiliation that I have felt the most gaslighted and outraged because I am not even part of a large minority — I am a member of the majority — yet the special interests in power have got us believing their bullshit better than any other group of bullies anywhere else in society.
