Liberal and conservative are not mutually exclusive. They are not opposites.  Ford is not the opposite of Chevy, Coke is not fundamentally different than Pepsi. It’s all an illusion, a myth perpetrated by people who make a very good living getting other people to buy their brand – their product or their thinking.

Mac and PC are both computers. But didn’t Apple do a great job with it’s “I’m a Mac” ad campaign? Conflate the product with the buyer’s personal identity, and away you go.

Conservative and liberal are impulses, not states of Being. Two sides of the same pancake, no matter how thin you make it; two points on the same continuum of social thought, two knots on the same string. In fact, they work very well together, in any brain capable of holding two apparently contradictory thoughts at the same time, and admitting that both might be valid. But that doesn’t work if the brain’s thinking is being done by someone else.

Pelosi is not the opposite of Boehner, Obama is not the opposite of Romney, Bachman or Cain. These are all politicians trying to get hired or keep their jobs. Funny that some of them can’t relate to millions of their fellow Americans who are trying to do the same thing.

In the end, somebody has to be hired to do the job, and it’s up to us to decide. Let’s hope we shake off this deep hypnotic state and learn to choose wisely.

So if Liberal is not the opposite of Conservative, what is? The opposite of each is the same: it’s indifference.