Non-sequitur Coffee Controversy

Some Christians have lost their minds. Not all of them. Maybe it is only the ones who have Twitter and Facebook accounts. Coupled with that they must already have a gripe against Starbuck's Coffee and a major persecution complex.

This subset of Christendom are saddled with an acute sense of non-sequitur in their belief system. The essential facts of this brew-ha-ha are as follows:

1. Starbuck's white coffee cups with their green logo are the norm most of the year.
2. In years past they temporarily changed they cup design to include wintry imagery such as snow flakes, pine trees and snow-personages.
3. This year (2015) they decided to make their seasonal cups red with their green logo.  

In those years past the anti-winter, anti-cold temperature people bought the coffee in the green decorative cups and enjoyed the taste, aroma, and warm fingers that the hot coffee provide and they kept their mouths shut. Except of course to sip the tasty brew.

This year there has arisen a cadre of irate people who think that Starbucks is disrespecting Christmas, Jesus and their entire faith by not placing the pagan symbols on their coffee cups. Their claim is one of "outrage and amplification" and an allegation of a "War of Christmas."

In the 1950's a red coffee cup would have been construed as an endorsement of Communism and subject to the Joseph McCarthy investigations and the resultant black listing of anyone accused of being a Commie during the "red scare." Unamerican you were.

If Starbucks had decided to make their cups blue this year, conservatives and Republicans and their radio and TV mouthpieces would be screaming Liberal Bias and calling for the same level of boycott.

By the same token why are not the Liberal and Democratically minded people outraged that Starbucks has endorsed the GOP by adopting their major color identity?

There are think tank focus groups who sit around all day coming up with ways to develop attention to their causes and positions. They have a formula that co-mixes their agenda with anything anyone does and injects it into the public venue. Sometimes they are successful and other time they flop. It is difficult to see the true size of a movement or boycott when the provocateurs are so prolific and own hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Facebook accounts with which to bat a small message around until it look like it is everywhere.

When I ran a small transit company, a salesman stopped by to sell me vehicle cleaning supplies. "You must have a large fleet," he said, "I see your white vans everywhere." Most of my vans were blue. One of them was white.