in practice, liberal is the city-life and conservative is the country-life.

This really helps in gerrymandering districts and subdividing the population into two easily manageable groups since they don't talk with one another a lot.

I think the definitions are intentionally designed to keep the public fighting itself with one group always trying to take away the rights of the other so in practice it's slow impoverishment of the commons and a forfeiture of political capital.

Essentially it's a huge scam (or a "scheme" if you think that sounds too conspiratorial). It's not a new scam, and not the first time it's been done - not even the first time in this country. The history of and tactics of union busting in the 1800s and 1900s essentially worked on the same divide-and-conquer techniques of pitting groups of workers against each other.

Going back further, the Indian wars worked in a similar manner ... feigning favoritism or some entitlement to one tribe to create a tribal conflict and prevent the indigenous from being a unified front.

This is the same game ... we call it "democrats" and "republicans" in this version.

The most effective Roman emperors were very good at playing frontier tribes against each other, and the plebeian, equestrian, and senatorial classes against each other. This is not a new tactic. :)