Starbucks Red Cup: A Distrust In American Culture

Our society has come to a point where it’s peculiar to trust institutions. The general consensus of Americans is that we are better than the people around us. Because of this America has an incredible followership problem. We don’t know how to trust anymore, but the root may be underlying in the leadership for the country. The distrust in America grows every day as events unfold. We see it in the analysis of the color of Starbucks cups, and in racial incidents. The fatal flaw of America is that we always find an underlying agenda...even if there isn’t one. The distrust that facilitates the discovery of these “agendas” certainly does stem from a certain level of vanity, ‘everything must pertain to me because that is how I view the world.’ Vanity, overanalysis, and curiosity are unequivocally the main contributors in America’s resistance to followership.
Vanity has become a common trait in American society and it grows into narcissism as we age. The idea that everything must relate to every person is silly and unrealistic, but many Americans believe it every day. They take something that, in all honesty, does not pertain to them, and relate themselves to it. One of the more common instances of this is the Starbucks’ red cup controversy. The company is being berated by some Christians for “attacking Christmas” because the cup is simply red with no design on it this year. One extremist went as far as to say that the red stood for the blood of Jesus. In reality, Starbucks came out with plain cups so the consumers could come up with their own doodles and stories, but the trust is