Artist and friend Charles Sherman created this truly amazing image!

“Just Friends” is its apt name.

While channeling his “Creatix Artist, Kreatia Kali”, Charles originally produced this piece Acrylic on Canvas 36″ x 48″ in Q4 of 2024. But now …

LET US BE UNITED in considering it a new United States flag!

This Fourth of July weekend, please take a moment to suspend disbelief and imagine the leaders of America’s two parties deciding to stop “buggering” each other and to instead decide to recognize that there is value in the other worthy of respect.

Respect is a great starting point. Could a modicum of mutual respect then serve the purpose of starting the extension of mercy, dignity, and kindness which might lead in turn lead to grace, and perhaps ultimately even love?

I know, I know that seems impossible. But perhaps we should take a bit more of a moment to examine why.

Pointedly, we might want to individually reflect on whether it is because these individuals are hellbent on destroying the other, or is it because “we” are the “split collective” which they serve?

In other words, to draw from the parlance of Abraham Lincoln, are we the “house divided?”

Is it not each of us who project all the evils onto “the other” leading and those lead by the opposing party while simultaneously retaining virtue to ourselves and our own party.

As a recovering neighbors’ real property, boundary dispute attorney, I can say without equivocation that nobody holds a monopoly on the truth.

Instead, through a glass darkly, I believe Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn author of The Gulag Archipeligo said it most correctly as …

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Indeed! As a nation wouldn’t we be doing so much better if we refrained from ad hominem attacks, each of us individually and then in aggregate numbers from our respective political parties, and instead as “Just Friends” attacked domestic and international policy to determine the best course of action?

This is exactly the why, how, and what which originally drove the “American Experiment” … right?

It was not, is not, and never will be a clean process.

But, the Federalist Papers; the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution; were “litigated” on their merits as ideas, not on the basis of “Quota or Cult.”

These documents are our attempt to figure out how to live with each other by not merely surviving but by actually thriving.

Somewhere along the line, this understanding became lost; the current state of our political parties are merely the roll-up of our multitudinous expressions of value distilled into two aggregate forms seemingly diametrically opposed.

And that is actually a good thing!

See, where there is one … there is one other – the hermetic “Law of Polarity.”

Specifically, for there to be an “up”; there must be a “down”. For there to be an “in”; there must be an “out”. For there to be a “rich”; there must be a “poor”. For there to be a “black”; there must be a “white”.

Ohh Boy! That’s starting to get a bit sensitive. Yes, True That!

Regardless as to his policies, objectively one must be willing to give credit where credit is due to our 44th President. Barak Obama not only broke through to become the first Black President of the United States … he was able to become re-elected. That’s an amazing set of feats!

Regardless too as to his policies, again one must be willing to give credit where credit is due to our 45th President, who instead of being exiled and die at his version of St. Helena after a defeat along the lines of Napoleon’s Waterloo, Donald Trump regained the Presidency as our 47th. This too is an amazing set of feats!

Really concentrate on that though. Both leaders ran incredible gauntlets to become president … repeatedly.

These feats are are absolutely miraculous!

There is no other country in the world which is designed to produce these types of miracles.

We live in an absolutely miraculous county – Go USA!

So, this Fourth of July, regardless of which side of the political line you stand, try to cut away your animosity for those on the other side.

Yes, it kind of hurts. But, if you do it right you will find something even more valuable.

You will find that those on the other side of the line are also worthy of respect, mercy, dignity, kindness, grace, and perhaps even love.

And the craziest thing is … as you extend this to others, you will find that you are able to extend a bit more respect, mercy, dignity, kindness, grace, and perhaps even love … to yourself.

If you are willing to do that for others as well as yourself, “Fly the Flag!”

Happy Fourth of July! BZ/JUSTICE SMILES, pllc.