Douglas Smith | Does anyone have Cromwell’s number?

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City is the massive structure built in the 4th century to house the designated sites of Christ’s crucifixion and tomb. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Apostolic, along with the Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syriac Orthodox churches are the major Christian denominations that claim oversight and control of it. Over centuries, to say that they disagree about its governance is to put it mildly. Scorpions in a bottle is more like it.

A small section of the building’s roof has been contested for many years between two of the sects, and monks are known to occupy chairs in the disputed areas in order to protect their turf. One of them moved his chair a few inches seeking shade on one particularly hot day, and the melee that ensued from the ‘hostile act’ resulted in some eleven hospitalizations.

During a 2012 tour there, I noted a wooden ladder propped against a second story wall over the church’s public entrance. I had encountered Jerusalem’s infamous ‘immovable ladder’. Placed there by a workman one day in about 1727, its disposition fell into an area of dispute where, over three centuries, six factions are willing to come to blows over the movement of a worker’s simple tool. Meanwhile, one of Christianity’s most revered sites slips further into decay.

I can’t think of a better meme to describe the 118th United States Congress.

Take our country’s southern border. It’s as if the matter has become Congress’s old wooden ladder. Until recently, conservatives were enjoying a high, and convincing, time of lampooning Democrats as unconcerned about about its security. But recent bi-partisan border legislation in the Senate has unmasked GOP hypocrisy, presenting Dems an upper hand in a presidential election year.

Now, the Senate’s bill is less than perfect, but by most lights, it beats the muddle that presently exists for border control. True to form, the malfunctioning US House majority has declared the bill DOA. The House also refused consideration of a bi-partisan 2013 Senate bill that, while imperfect, offered much better control of the border.

Feckless seems to best describe the current House. The majority would rather eat its own in the removal of Speaker Kevin McCarthy last fall. It insists upon playing chicken with with the nation’s credit rating through squabbles over debt ceiling legislation. While meaningful attempts to secure our border languishes, the House opts for both silly grandstanding of impeaching a cabinet official, and impeachment blather against the president. It’s so much more fun to throw sand than to mix it into concrete, isn’t it?

In 1653, a few short years after King Charles I was deposed, England’s so-called ‘Rump Parliament’ was threatening to overstay its term, and its welcome. As it grew increasingly moribund, the frustrated Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, paid a call. Finally, having enough of them, Cromwell declared: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say, and let us have done with you!”

Does anyone have Cromwell’s number?