WASHINGTON — The days get shorter, darker, colder. This solstice season the descent feels more real. Then there’s 2024 to brace for.

It’s all there in the midnight clear here in the heartbeat of the free world. We’re lighting menorah candles and Christmas trees, but without much incandescent spirit. Our holiday rituals are heavy with bloody wars raging in Israel and Ukraine — plus, the ongoing war at home.

The devious Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems blinded and unbounded in bombing raids on thousands of Gaza civilians after Hamas committed atrocities in murdering 1,200 Israeli women, men and children. The Oct. 7 tragedy stirred hostilities in the volatile Mideast.

They dig deeper and deeper into benighted Hamas tunnels in Gaza.

Foreign policy shifted abruptly to aiding Israel at the expense of arming Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touched down to plead with President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans not to leave Ukraine out in the winter cold waging war against the ruthless Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Don’t bet on it. Republicans are over Ukraine, unless Zelenskyy can sway them in person.

The tilted 6-3 Supreme Court is the latest battle in the war within. The six Republican members are a Federalist Society cabal. Three were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

In a historic first, they stole human rights from women and girls, and the country is unhappy with that extreme, as seen in a Texas mother forced to travel to another state for reproductive care.

Democracy is meant to expand rights, stupid.

Here’s the rub: The court will soon rule on whether a former president is immune in a criminal federal case. The suspense is killing me.

So much depends upon these unelected “justices.”

If — or when — the majority rescues Trump from facing trial in March for sending a mob to the Capitol, then you’ll hear him crow all over the land.

Equal Justice Under Law, engraved on the marble building, will be belied and struck down. Trump’s dreams of revenge for a lost election shall be stoked.

Public confidence in the court’s fairness, without fear or favor, shall sink lower and lower. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., calls it “captured” by corrupt dark money and lavish gifts, loans and vacations. Political pundit Norman Ornstein calls the court “a hot mess.”

Across First Street is the Capitol, which was besieged by rioters sent by Trump in his desperate plot to hold onto power on Jan. 6, 2021.

Under that dome is a new Republican House speaker from the Deep South, Mike Johnson, La., who talks a good game. He’s a Christian, by God, a chosen one.

Johnson is not joking when he presents as a modern Moses, the first Hebrew Bible lawgiver. He told Congress his wife spent days “on her knees” praying that he’d become speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Calif., was ousted.

The speaker acts holier than thou but opposed expelling the notorious New York Rep. George Santos. He presses for an impeachment inquiry for President Biden instead of getting homework done as 2023 ends.

In sheer partisan malice, Johnson allowed the House to approve censuring a Democratic member, Rep. Jamal Bowman, for pulling a fire alarm under stress.

Johnson is a classic American character straight out of the satire “Elmer Gantry,” the Sinclair Lewis novel about a hypocrite evangelist preacher.

Now a word about President Biden.

Don’t read or write his political obituary just yet. Don’t believe gleeful reports about him polling behind Trump in battleground states. Don’t join the parade of pessimism and the media trope that he is too old.

Biden is a good president, a man for all seasons — on climate, job creation, the pandemic and walking a picket line. It should be as simple as that.

Former President Barack Obama talked the talk in poetry; Biden walks the walk in prose.

I know many who fear the new year, sure that Trump will come back to power. Self-defeating talk rarely wins elections.

Saturday I walked to the Folger Theatre for a Shakespeare talk, past the silent Supreme Court and the illumined Capitol. I refuse to give up faith.

Rainy day Sunday, a few friends came over for Champagne, candles, cheer. Handel’s “Messiah” helped bring it home. These dark days, reach for light.

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.

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