If political parties were sodas

Let’s pretend that political parties were brands of soda.  The following is just a funny thought experiment and doesn’t imply actual views held by specific soda manufacturers.  Neither is it an accurate description of the flavors of their products.  That said, let’s begin!

In the USA, Coke and Pepsi have been around well over a century, and have been in fierce competition for market share.  They say they’re very different, but as soon as the soda goes in the glass, it’s obvious that they taste nearly the same.  As it happens, the majority shareholders who fund the operations of Coca-Cola are also the majority shareholders in Pepsi.  Coincidence?

They do have a few competitors, like RC, Red Bull, and Moxie, but they never really get anywhere.  RC does the best of these “Third Soda” brands.  They say they’re closest to the soda made back in the old days, but their flavor is boring and seems watered down.  Red Bull has a powerful flavor but tastes weird and is bad for you in large doses.  Red Bull fans want it to be the official soda sanctioned by the government, and nobody will be allowed to drink other brands.  Moxie has a powerful flavor too, very sharp and clear.  It takes some getting used to at first, but then it turns out that they’re everything the other brands are not.  Coke and Pepsi fear Moxie more than each other.

For some odd reason, with each decade, Pepsi tastes a little more like Red Bull.  Those two companies always have been fairly friendly.  Also oddly, Coke always tastes like last decade’s Pepsi.  That doesn’t make Pepsi drinkers want to switch to Coke; they keep on drinking Pepsi like they always did.  Seventy years ago, Coke used to taste like a milder version of Moxie.  Then former Pepsi executives started working for Coca-Cola, eventually becoming the majority on the Board of Directors about thirty years ago.

When Moxie fans point out that the leading sodas have unhealthy ingredients, everyone else tries to shout them down.  When RC fans say the same things about other brands, nobody pays any attention.  Moxie fans have lively debates about whether or not they should even display their own brand’s emblem.  Red Bull fans don’t have that problem, luckily for them.  Their brand is heavily promoted to college students, and it’s hard to find a university that doesn’t have Red Bull monopoly on campus.

Other countries have similar arrangements.  Britain has a “three soda system”, in contrast to the USA’s “two soda system”.  RC is about as popular as Coke and Pepsi, but there, it tastes little different from the others.  They’re all equally unhealthy too.  In Germany, technically you’re not allowed to have Red Bull, so they just renamed it Pink Bull and nobody cares otherwise.  You’re definitely not allowed to have Moxie, and you can get thrown in jail if you say that things were better back when Moxie had a soda monopoly.  Russia used to have a Red Bull monopoly for a long time, but their head honcho owns Shasta, so Shasta it is.

As for the USA’s head honcho, he was from Coca-Cola.  Very strangely, most of the top Coca-Cola executives tried their utmost to sabotage him.  Pepsi executives don’t like him any better, of course.  They work together to make sure he never can make changes to the flavor.  Pepsi further accuses him of being a secret agent, though they can’t seem to figure out if it’s for Moxie or for Shasta.