California's burning and its political foes are practically dancing in the flames and reveling in the ashes.
The wreckage and ruin are biblical in size, scope and wall-to-wall destruction.
At least 24 people are dead. Thousands of structures have been laid to waste. Roughly 150,000 people have fled for their lives. For some perspective, that's as though the entire population of Billings, Mt.; Allentown, Pa.; or West Palm Beach, Fla., had suddenly picked up and moved en masse.
And the menace isn't nearly ended. The winds stoking the wildfires are forecast to pick up once more and bellow for more than a day's length. Things seem destined to grow worse across a wide swath of Los Angeles and its besieged neighbors. Much worse.
And yet the response from the nation's incoming president and many of his political allies has been utterly devoid of caring or compassion. In their haste to score points and politicize one of the worst natural disasters in California history, most haven't even bothered offering the ritual hopes and prayers.
Donald Trump taunted "Gov. Gavin Newscum," lambasted President Biden and trotted out old canards about wasted water supposedly flowing to the ocean. (The state's reservoirs are actually at or above their historic levels.)
Richard Grenell, who was recently named Trump's envoy for "special missions," claimed "the far-left policies of Democrats in California are literally burning us to the ground."
Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee blamed the devastation on an overweening environmental sensitivity that puts the survival of "tiny fish" ahead of the lives and livelihoods of suffering residents.
And on.
It's not only unseemly, as the toll mounts and fresh hell rains on Southern California.
It's unprecedented.
"I can't think of a president, Republican or Democrat, that has tried to inject partisan politics into an ongoing disaster relief effort," said Dan Schnur, who served as a communications strategist for former California GOP Gov. Pete Wilson and now teaches at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.
"Presidents of both parties have always said very harsh and very nasty things about the other party," Schnur noted. "But we've never had a president, or a president-elect for that matter, start taking shots while people are still in danger."
The falsehoods and misinformation are bad enough.
"I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!" Trump wrote on social media. "He is [to] blame."
This is a measure of the depravity of our current politics.
Leave it — improbably — to Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and Gavin Newsom's arch nemesis, to remind us how politicians used to respond to calamity.
"Our prayers are with everyone affected by the horrific fires in Southern California," said DeSantis, who has overseen his state's response to numerous deadly hurricanes. "When disaster strikes, we must come together to help our fellow Americans in any way we can. The state of Florida has offered help to assist the people of California in responding to these fires and in rebuilding communities that have been devastated."
What comes to mind are the famous words of attorney Joseph Welch, who verbally decapitated Joseph McCarthy in a nationally televised congressional hearing that brought the Wisconsin senator's cruel Red-baiting crusade to an abrupt and deserved end.
"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Welch said. "Have you left no sense of decency?"