WASHINGTON — "We need each other." Bill Clinton once spoke those simple words. Never has that truth been truer than in the waning days of America's 2020. The year is truly Dickensian, with the pandemic changing everybody and everything in an uneven government response. The holidays will hurt many families, missing members.

People need to congregate in public spaces, not only churches and temples. People need to mix, cross paths by chance, catch one another's eyes and talk to pass the time. Children need to play. Young ones need to flirt and fall in love. Broadway actors need to perform before actual audiences. Doctors and teachers need to see their patients and pupils. "Remote learning" seems a cruel contradiction. Adults thrive on camaraderie as we go about daily rounds.

Zoom meetings and social media are ersatz and ethereal, thin gruel — like Oliver's porridge in the "Oliver Twist" orphanage.

On Dec. 7, we remember Pearl Harbor as a national bombshell. The 1941 milestone marked President Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of war, saying the attack was "a date which shall live in infamy." The president had a fully united nation with him upon entering World War II.

Hear me for this claim: In that world war, a spirited togetherness burned bright in both the war abroad and the mobilization at home. It was a good war, when the president had the ear of the people. It was a time you felt glad to be alive. My grandmother was a widowed nurse with four children who listened to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats to lift morale.

Always the cheery realist, Roosevelt was beloved and believed.

Now is not like then. After nine months, our lives feel like a siege, with a dispirited sense of apartness from enforced time at home. Private walls are closing in. California is under stay-at-home orders.

Once bustling, our shared public spaces are dry and clamped down by COVID-19, such as the human mosaic that used to enliven the Santa Monica Promenade. The grand Union Station here has a lonely great Christmas tree (a gift from Norway) standing in the center with nobody around it to sing, light or behold it. Few train travelers stream by toward the taxis waiting outside, in full view of the cold marble Capitol.

Stark sidewalks downtown have lost their step, the city ballet of walkers utterly absent. Buildings are nothing without the people. Think of all the conversations over coffees missed, the laughs, the ideas, the impulse store buys for the holidays. All the little losses can't be counted.

But you wouldn't believe how shabby Lafayette Square looks now, in front of the White House. It's barricaded, with signs left from the June street protests against police brutality. The square looks abandoned, an eyesore from any angle. The equestrian statue of President Andrew Jackson, who Trump says he admires, is obscured from public view.

This scene borders on criminal neglect of a historic square. Dolley Madison lived there. That was where women suffragists celebrated winning the vote in 1920.

We know Donald Trump left behind a wake of shambles and bleeding business bankruptcies. We didn't know he'd do much the same for the country and economy.

The ruined square speaks of revenge on elegance, public gatherings, a popular president, perhaps even on women. Staring, I couldn't shake the sensation that Trump has us — languishing with the fizz knocked out of life — pretty much where he wants us.

It's fair to say this president could not have done a better job of laying us low if he tried. He could not have cut the heart of democracy more cleanly. Contesting the "rigged" election isn't over yet.

Remember Abraham Lincoln spoke to the "better angels" of our nature? Trump did the opposite, seeking darkness in our character. In Trump's world, bragging was the national pastime. We know his open racism, misogyny, xenophobia and lies seared our collective soul. He encouraged "us" to hate "them." Those scars won't heal so quickly.

On the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will look like kissing cousins, a rare planetary event. As ancient people read the skies, this meant a calamity coming. For us, let's hope, it means one is going.

Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To read her weekly column and find out more about Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.