Red and Blue at War

Since the 2004 election results were famously color-coded by state, red or blue can now serve as answers for questions like "What is your stance on abortion?" or "How do you feel about warrantless wire taps?"

Regardless of how slim the margin of victory was, each state became a Red State or a Blue State overnight. If you were a Democrat in Alabama or a Republican in Vermont, you suddenly didn't exist, as if there is no middle ground.

As many have realized now, the Red State/Blue State scheme has turned into a divisive mechanism, leading people to exaggerated beliefs and sweeping judgments that lump entire regions of our country into one political party.

In reality, our country is extremely purple, sometimes with two precincts within a district within a state at voting odds with one another.

Of course, this isn't the first polarizing war between Red and Blue. Coke and Pepsi have been trying to get people to choose one over the other for almost a century.

Is this a war that needs to be fought? Is this a war that can actually be won (War on Terror, anyone. . .)?

Can we just stop it already, lay down our arms and admit that Pepsi and Coke are both delicious, similar-tasting beverages, each with their own distinctive subtleties to which some people may or may not favor over the other if they so choose?

Like a friend of mine mentioned the other day, Coke and Pepsi are always going to each have 48 percent of the cola market regardless, but they spend hundreds of millions a year in advertising, scrapping away at the remaining 4 percent. Wouldn't those hundreds of millions be better spent hooking a more impoverished country's youth on sweet, fattening drinks for life?

The truth is I'm tired of being told that Coke Is It or that it is Always Coca-Cola. I don't need Pepsi informing me that it just so happens to be America's Choice and that Nothing Else Is A Pepsi.

Don't tell me that I have to prefer one over the other and that if I like Coke I must not like Pepsi and if I dislike Coke that must mean that I love Pepsi.

You, paid-off researchers, stop your studies where you unsuspectingly direct me to drink from two cups, one marked Pepsi, the other marked Coke and when I say I prefer one over the other you rip off my blindfold and mockingly inform me that they were both Coke.

I have better things to do and so should you.

I guarantee the next time I walk into a restaurant this is what will happen:

I'll have a Coke.

We have Pepsi, is that OK?

Yes it is OK. You know why? Because they're both equally refreshing.

Here's how simple this Pepsi vs. Coke thing is for me, and for you too, I would imagine. If Pepsi was magically $1 cheaper per 12-pack than Coke, I would probably become a Pepsi drinker. And vice versa, of course.

Now, if you're the type to say that you find Pepsi horribly rancid but adore every sweet droplet of Coca-Cola, perhaps it's because you've been led to believe that it is not an option to think they're both pretty OK.

I guess the Pepsi vs. Coke war is a lot like the political landscape in our country. On the far right (Coke) and the far left (Pepsi), you have people saying the other side are nothing but vile deceptors who want to destroy America. No middle ground. No gray areas. No I-can-see-your-points. Just ideology to the death.

Meanwhile there are millions of people stuck in the middle realizing that in the end, they both pretty much taste the same.