WASHINGTON — Just back from a sweet sight: President Donald Trump going out on a losing note with loyalists in Congress. The House voted to override a presidential veto — the one time it's happened in his one-term presidency. The House approved the $740 billion defense authorization bill over his objection, by a whopping 322-87 vote Monday. Even 109 stalwart House Republicans deserted Trump in his waning hours.

The Senate is likely to send the same rebuke, now stymied. The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is loath to hold a vote on the second big House bill Monday, which boosts COVID-19 relief payments to $2,000.

Senators, proud of the bipartisan defense bill, were annoyed at cutting their holiday short due to Trump's cavalier veto near Christmas. At year's end, political pressure will likely force the Senate to greenlight both bills. Note 130 House Republicans voted against higher direct payments — defying Trump's last stand.

What is the cure for what ails us?

Just look at a handful of headlines: "Millions of Jobless on brink of Poverty"; "Enduring the Final Days of Trump." Those are from USA Today. The Atlantic described "Our Broken Democracy." Mix in the deaths from the pandemic.

It's all over now, the pretense that we aren't ravaged, from seniors down to children crying because they miss school friends. Washington is exhausted on both sides, with reservoirs run dry by a vicious voice in tongue and tweet.

We're counting days until Jan. 20, President-elect Joe Biden's Inauguration Day. He projects sympathy — and solutions — for the discouraged and diminished.

Meanwhile, the losing one-term president is defying all the usual norms with his pardons. He has nothing and no friends left to lose. The country is hurting much more, laid low by the coronavirus and the fragile economy. If Trump's COVID-19 case was cured, then that's all he knows.

To the question: What did we to deserve the wrath of 2020?

In 1620, when the Mayflower pilgrims landed on Massachusetts shores, that question would be easy. Men could form aboard ship a pact of self-government. They might build a city on a hill and call it Boston. But things were really up to God.

In the 1740s, when we were colonies, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards gave a famous speech in Connecticut that made the bargain on earth clear, between God and us. We were "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," suffering and at the mercy of God. So, you better be good.

In 1820, we had the last known Era of Good Feelings in Washington. James Monroe, last in the "Virginian dynasty" presidents, was amiable. Things were sunny, but for the dark cloud of Southern slavery. Monroe owned slaves, fewer than the rest. But the institution was rapidly growing and created great wealth in the South. The Virginia planter presidents praised landed ways of life at the expense of thriving cities: cultural, shipping, banking and trading centers.

We were unifying as a nation, not just a bunch of states. I imagine President Monroe would put a cheery gloss on wearing masks and so on. People would have the plague embedded in memory, and Monroe might have appealed to that as well as their patriotism. A partisan divide over distancing and masks would not have frozen progress.

From 1918 to 1920, Woodrow Wilson was president during the global influenza epidemic. About 675,000 Americans died. Like Trump, Wilson shied away from taking it seriously, even after he was stricken by a secret illness, most likely influenza. He was negotiating a treaty in Paris with other world leaders (to end World War I). Wilson did not tell the American people he fell seriously ill. Some think he was never the same.

Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister. Was God displeased with his segregationist stance and opposition to women's suffrage for five years?

In our day, a secular democracy barely survived a stress test in peacetime. Still divided and sick, that's the price we pay for a rogue who was more pretender than president.

Among the politerati across America, Trump's wild-eyed words on the pandemic confirmed his dark character and caused much of the contagion.

We are the cure for what ails us.

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.