Starbucks? Democrat?!

Last time I looked Starbucks’ former CEO Howard Schultz was threatening a massive radical centrist attack. Independent, even Bernie signed the oath.

The Geography of Partisan Prejudice
Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla. and Angela Y. He, The Atlantic
Mar 4, 2019

Americans now routinely guess one another’s partisan leanings based on what they eat, drive, and drink (Dunkin’ Donuts? Republican; Starbucks? Democrat), according to a working paper by the University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate Hye-Yon Lee. And based on these unreliable cues, they say they’d be more or less likely to want to live, work, or hang out with one another.

We are now judging one another’s fundamental decency based on whether we eat at Chipotle or Chick-fil-A. This may seem silly—harmless, even. But it is uncomfortably reminiscent of stories from conflict zones abroad. In Northern Ireland, for example, an outsider visiting during the Troubles had no way to tell unionists and nationalists apart. They were pretty much all white Christians, after all. But the locals themselves routinely guessed one another’s identity based on their names, the spacing of their eyes, their sports jerseys, the color of their hair, their neighborhood, or even how much jewelry they wore­. This process came to be known as “telling.” If a reliable cue didn’t exist, people would make one up. It was a way to move about in the world in a time of profound tribalism, during which 3,600 people were killed.

In parts of America, it is markedly more uncomfortable to be perceived as a Democrat right now. In other places, it is very isolating to be outed as a Republican. To get a sense of these differences, we asked PredictWise to do two other rankings—this time reflecting the directional flow of partisan prejudice. The resulting maps reveal places where Democrats are the most dismissive of Republicans and vice versa.

In general, Republicans seem to dislike Democrats more than Democrats dislike Republicans, PredictWise found. We don’t know why this is, but this is not the only study to have detected an imbalance. For example, in a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, half of consistently conservative respondents said it was important for them to live in a place where most people share their political views—compared with just 35 percent of consistent liberals. But a more recent survey, conducted in December by The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute, found that Democrats were the ones showing more ill will—with 45 percent saying they’d be unhappy if their child married a Republican (versus 35 percent of Republicans saying they’d be unhappy if their child married a Democrat). So it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, but what’s clear is that both sides are becoming more hostile toward one another.

Conflict and protest are vital to democracy. But whenever people begin to caricature one another, anywhere in the world, predictable tragedies occur. Fixable problems do not get fixed. Neighbors become estranged, embittered, and sometimes violent. Everyone ends up worse off, sooner or later. “This is the great danger America faces,” Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas said in 1976. “That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.”

And other Bothsiderism. Still it is true that we ae increasingly targeted by our tastes.

At the bottom of my hill just before you hit the highway (well, depending how you go I always say to drivers who miss the turns) I have a directly competing Dunkin’ Donuts with a Starbucks just across the street.

Look, if I can’t have home drip brewed 100% Colombian I’m not that interested in coffee because I drink mine black and unsweetened. If I’m particularly caffeine needy I’ll add a shot or two of Espresso, for ordinary consumption I’m partial to strong Green Tea but it’s hard to road manage as they usually toss you a teabag or two and a cup of hot water.

Mine brews 45 minutes (boiling) and what I do to cheat is cold brew a gallon at a time for 24 hours and nuke it to temp. Works surprisingly well. Why that? Takes a while to develop the taste, longer brew == more caffeine (by more we mean coffee levels), doesn’t increase bitterness the way over brewing coffee does, it just tastes like tea, at least if you use good tea.

Starbucks on the other hand is a nightmare of over roasted burnt mitigated only by syrups and sugar and cream. Hardly deserves to be called coffee, I’ve had better in a lumberyard.

Plus DD has the Bacon/Egg Croissantwich and Burger King is out of the way.

Life is creepy and getting more so by the minute.